


Tell Me a Secret

by AlexMeg



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Romance, Deals a bit with trauma, Domestic Fluff, Draco plays violins, Falling In Love, Forced Marriage, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Lack of Communication, M/M, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minor Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Draco Malfoy, Oblivious Harry Potter, Painter Harry, Past Child Abuse, Pining Draco Malfoy, Pining Harry Potter, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Sickfic, Slow Burn, Sort of - resolution of everything is implied so it's good and painless I promise!!, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Terminal Illnesses, but only emotionally, fairly quick sexually, possible dubcon due to bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 81,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28478091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexMeg/pseuds/AlexMeg
Summary: In which the bond is rooted in their emotions, everything goes even more wrong, and Harry is certain that he and Draco could never feel what the curse wants them to feel for each other.Until Harry does.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 208
Kudos: 515





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> A HUGE shout-out to:
> 
> whileatwiltshire: my alphareader and beloved friend, who has read through this story at its WORST over a course of months, and was still so patient and supportive and kind. You have helped me so much through this by letting me discuss this fic with you, always giving me such in-depth and thoughtful answers to all my concerns and questions, breaking me out of my writer's block with all your suggested scenes and ideas. Probably would have been lost in that mess if it weren't for you
> 
> GallaPlacidia: for your amazingly quick betateading, for refining/cleaning up this story, for all your advice/suggestions and for helping me fill in some missing gaps. It was so great to have you on this, and just very very lovely in general getting to talk to you
> 
> And finally, to Tepre and their beautiful, beautiful fic, Grounds for Divorce. It really got the ball rolling for this one! That fic was so badly on my mind the first (and second) time I read it, and I think this largely began as an attempt to calm down some of that love that I nearly didn't know what to do with
> 
> That being said, while the barebones in some ways and certain details of the fic (and I think the first half of this chapter??) are similar to GfD, it has come to be an entirely different story overall
> 
> Happy/Kinder New Years to everybody!! And I so hope you enjoy this fic 💙

"You go first, 'Mione," Harry said. They were opening their NEWTs results. 

It was sure to be good news with her, unless Merlin forbid she had gotten an E on one of her subjects, then it depended on what her idea of _good news_ was. He said just as much, and Ron grinned. Hermione huffed and pushed at Harry's shoulder with a hint of mirth.

After the war, Harry had been offered a job as an Auror, but he'd stayed behind to spend his final year with his friends. He had wanted to be a teenager, or something like it, just for a while longer. But by graduation, all the doubts had creeped in, in particular as he went through his Mind-Healing sessions throughout Eighth Year. 

Hermione appeared to notice his suddenly dour mood, when it was his turn to see his scores. "What's wrong, Harry?" 

All Harry felt was a strange pang of misery, seeing them, all the subjects he'd taken just for his Auror training. "I don't know, I've just—" He kept thinking of Voldemort, of the pounding of his own heart so fast that it felt like it would kill him, of the unsaved lives that weighed on him. "I don't know if being an Auror is what I want."

In the papers, that was what everybody seemed to expect of him — that he would go on and continue to be the saviour of the world in some form. Saying that now, he kept having the strange sense that he disappointed somebody ever since the words left him.

"Well," Ron said, after a long moment. "Then don't become an Auror."

Harry looked up at him, and thought of the two of them in First Year, talking to each other from their beds in the boys dormitory about their future, about how brilliant it would be to become a duo saving the world together, fighting crime. 

_Yeah, like_ — _muggle superheroes, you know,_ Harry had said, smiling. He'd been happy and high on the feeling of having his very own friend. He'd been thinking of those shows on the Dursleys' television, those rare occasions he was alone and he got to watch them. Ron had, of course, not understood what that meant until Harry explained it to him. _We could be Aurors,_ Ron had then said, grinning, pleased by the idea. _Closest thing to it. Yeah, we could be partners, fighting evil together!_

Harry swallowed. They'd been planning for this since First Year. There wasn't anything better he could have imagined for his future, once. Then he hadn't thought he'd have a future, and now he did. Now he had all this life, all this freedom to do with it what he willed, all this time that stretched endless ahead of him, with no aim or plan. It was terrifying.

"We've been wanting this for so long. Seems wrong to let it go now."

"Doesn't mean you have to put in any more effort into things you don't want to do, Harry," Ron said. "You know what Dad always says. Life's already too hard without you doing things that make you unhappy, and mate, I think you've done enough of that to last you a lifetime."

Nothing much was said after that. They drank from the same bottle of wine, passing it around between the three of them. Ron's arm was across the cushions of their new couch, long enough to run around Hermione, his fingers brushing over Harry's shoulder.

He'd been touchy ever since the war, with Hermione obviously, kissed her all the time and always seemed to have a hand on her waist or the small of her back, but also with Harry; a casual, tight hand to the nape of his neck, an arm around his shoulder blades, bicep against his when they brushed their teeth at the sink together, as if constantly trying to remind himself that they were all still here.

Harry didn't mind it much, liked it in fact, if it was him or Hermione or any of the Weasleys, even if it was hard to seem outwardly comfortable about it. He thought they understood anyway, the way he'd lean into it after a moment and try not to be too obvious about it, because they never stopped.

"Who's going to save your arse on that field when you'll have to face spiders though?" Harry said, a while after, a bit drunker.

Hermione laughed, the bridge of her nose wrinkling up with it, and Ron threw his NEWTs results at him and called him a tit, but it didn't reach Harry's face, instead floating down unimpressively to the floor. Hermione would have been annoyed by it, usually, but even she seemed to have enough alcohol in her system to be relaxed about mistreatment of results parchments. They all watched it go down, snorting into another small fit, warm and woozy from the wine. 

They fell asleep on the bed, Harry between the two of them, Hermione's arm curled around his bicep and her head against his shoulder.

Ron began his Auror trials, eventually. Hermione went into her Unspeakable training around the same time.

Harry didn't know what he wanted, but he knew becoming an Auror wasn't it. Eventually he decided to open a book shop in the wizarding districts of London called _Lilium Bookstore_ , named after his mother. He donated a good portion of his money to causes that would help better a post-war world, and spent much of his free time renovating 12 Grimmauld palace.

He took up art again, an old hobby revived. In Eighth Year, Hogwarts built a system of including muggle extracurricular activities. There'd been a lot of options, but Harry had remembered himself at five through ten, sitting in a small cupboard surrounded by crumpled paper and broken, used up colour pencils, wishing for paints and art sets like the ones Dudley had and never bothered to use, and he'd chosen painting without a second thought. He never stopped loving it after, found a corner of peace within it in the midst of his chaos and grief.

  
  


* * *

In Eighth Year, Harry had tried his best to steer clear of Draco Malfoy.

They would pass by each other on the grounds, in the corridors, in the Eighth Year commons on their way to their own dorms. Sometimes, he'd think he noticed Malfoy's steps falter right as they crossed each other, but then would chalk it down to imagination. 

Still, there had been few moments that they mildly interacted, wordless and uneasy, such as that time Malfoy had picked up his shrivel figs for him — having rolled over to a black oxford after they'd slipped from Harry's hands. Malfoy had been seated in the adjacent row right beside him, handed them to him without looking at him. 

There was that time Malfoy had hovered stiffly beside him some feet away, stood in front of a bookshelf. He'd been standing on the toes of his shoes, head tilted upward, eyes pointedly roving over the spines of the books as his fingers slid over them, the touch unbreaking. His lips had been moving, shaping around the title names as he read. Harry had moved aside to allow him to keep looking, leaning back slightly on the shelf behind him.

That time Malfoy, sitting behind him, had softly mumbled the answer to the question Harry was asked in Transfigurations, more to himself than to Harry, surely. Harry had felt slightly guilty for repeating it back to Professor McGonagall, when she'd nodded, sharp, and smiled at him in approval.

That time Harry had found him curled alone against the side of the couch in the dead of night, his eyes red-rimmed and his expression hollow. He'd straightened slightly upon seeing him, a flush blooming up his neck to his jaw. Harry hadn't known what to do, faint visions of a bathroom stall full of water and blood slipping unbiddenly into his mind's eye, and so he'd turned around and walked away.

It would be the day after that Harry would know why he'd looked like that. Lucius Malfoy had been given the Dementor's Kiss. Malfoy hadn't been there in the Great Hall, or in their classes together for the rest of the day. He hadn't been anywhere for weeks after, showed up only for his NEWTS two weeks with grief sinking his eyes in. He hadn't bothered showing up for the graduation ceremony either. 

Harry remembered not seeing him there, an empty chair at the Slytherin table, thinking that their final day of NEWTs would have been the last he'd ever see of him.

Almost a year later, Harry was sitting at his kitchen table, an invitation to Malfoy Manor loose between his hands. His heart had seized, inexplicably, at the name signed at the bottom. _Cordially, Draco L. Malfoy,_ it said, and he blinked and blinked, wondering if it would change if he did so enough times. 

The rest of the day, he drifted through reasons for why it could be, then discussed them with Ron and Hermione at dinner that night—that fancy silk-green envelope still held between two fingers—until he realised that they'd only been humming for the last couple of minutes, throwing in little interjections for responses, no longer saying much back.

Harry spent too long looking for something decent and casual to wear, trying his best to get his hair somewhat in control so that Malfoy wouldn't have anything to point out and mock, but his curls were still too wild and thick, and he was already minutes too late, which would certainly be something for Malfoy to point out and mock.

But Malfoy didn't say anything about his tardiness, when Harry did arrive in his drawing room. He sat with a wine glass in hand, facing the fire until he noticed Harry come in. 

He seemed awfully surprised for a brief second, straightening upright with a hand on the arm of his sofa. It changed into a blandly polite squinch at the corners of his mouth, turning his face away as he put his drink on the side table.

"Potter," he said. The glass clinked right as he stood to his feet, seeming a little slow to it. He seemed a bit like he didn't quite know what to say, standing there like that. Then, slipping his hands into his trouser pockets, "I didn't think you'd accept."

"Neither did I," Harry said, only because he didn't quite know what to say either. They hadn't spoken much for about two years now, not through Eighth Year, meeting eyes in passing. Not through this year.

"Have a seat," Malfoy said, sounding as if he was going through the motions of social etiquette.

Malfoy waited a few seconds. When Harry didn't oblige, he turned and made his way over to the bar across the room. His hair was tucked behind his ears, only just reached the wrap of his black, woollen rollneck. "What do you like to drink?"

"Why am I here, Malfoy?" Harry asked, instead of answering. 

Malfoy faltered in his movements, pausing for only a moment, and then began to clink and clunk through glasses and bottles, a little more careful and pointed, as if too aware of himself. He found something, rotated the bottle to read the label, and then poured it out, his elbow flexed laterally as he measured the drink. Harry sat down, finally, hesitantly, waiting.

Malfoy only spoke again after he returned, handing him his glass. Harry did not plan to drink it. "Right. Let's get down to business then, shall we?" he said as he settled back down on the sofa, leaned back, legs crossed, ankle over knee. He picked up his drink again. "You see, Potter, Mother and I believe it is time for us to make our amends, and so—" He cleared his throat, a hint of a bob against the neck of his jumper. "We're hosting some charity events, the proceedings of which should go to renovations of Hogwarts and any other affected areas, as well as to war causes and organizations."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Right. That's great and all, Malfoy, that you're — " _Growing a conscience_ , Harry would have said. He held it back. "But what does that have to do with me?"

"You've got influence, don't you," Malfoy said, shrugging. "Hardly anybody would support our cause on its own, but donations from you, or even a civil standing with you clear to the public eye, would increase our chances of success."

Harry stared at him. So Malfoy called him all the way here to have him publicly endorse his family name. His eyes narrowed, smiling thinly. "You can't be serious."

Malfoy's eyes were steady, cool, a shift of his head. "Alright. So I should admit, part of it _is_ to get back into society's good graces, indeed." 

Harry's lips tightened, hummed, biting his upper lip. He glanced down at his untouched drink.

"But that is mostly for the sake of my mother. When I'm—" Malfoy halted, suddenly, his jaw working slightly. Harry finally looked up at him. "I would only like for people to be kinder to her if I'm ever not present, that is all." His head lifted, turning, meeting Harry's eyes again. "In return for your favours, I'm willing to offer whatever you ask of me. Whatever."

"Right," Harry said.

Harry had spoken for him at his trial, had believed him better than his father _._ Better, however, did not necessarily mean good, and certainly not enough for Harry to believe that the Malfoy name should ever regain any sort of status or power ever again. Status and power changed people, and Malfoy was not someone Harry had enough faith in to assume he would use it well. 

And so, with a face stone-still, he said, "I don't think so, Malfoy."

Malfoy's face was unwavering and cryptic, his gaze flicking the slightest over Harry's face.

"I see," Malfoy said, finally, softly. He put his drink away, lips flicking to taste the drink on them, and then he rose from his seat. "Well then, that is that. I shall see you out."

Harry was surprised at the lack of argument, at the ease and lack of concern he'd accepted this with. Then, he thought that perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised. There wasn't a lot Malfoy could do when he wasn't the one with the upper hand in this situation, not anything that would prove why he did not want any associations with the Malfoys.

"Yeah. No. I'll be fine." Harry stood to his feet. He was moving to make for the door, suddenly questioning why he came in the first place.

Except Malfoy called for him with a quiet, "Potter." And something in his voice made Harry stop before he could move beyond a swift turn of his body, made him look back at Malfoy, who had just stepped up to him, one hand in the pocket of his pressed dark trousers. 

The firelights played up shadows across Malfoy's face, on the unfathomable sort of look he had fixated on Harry. It felt heavy with something, somehow. "This should be the last we see of each other, then, I believe," Malfoy said, with that strange sort of weight again, a vague finality. Up this close, he looked almost a bit too pale. He held out his hand for Harry.

Harry stepped back from it, flicking down a quick glance at the hand, and then back up at Malfoy.

His face was guarded. Something brimmed behind the calm facade, the transfixed gaze meeting Harry's. His jaw was firmly locked, a knot of muscle jumping there.

"Er, right. Yeah." Harry lifted his hand, somewhat bemused. It hovered for a second. Two. Then, hesitantly, he slipped it over Malfoy's. He was cold. "Goodbye, Malfoy."

Malfoy's expression shifted slightly, something nearly of a softening, but not quite. He smirked, long, nimble fingers curling around his hand. "Goodbye, Potter."

There was a jolt up Harry's arm when Malfoy touched him back, a swift rush of energy flooding into his body, laced with a strange mixture of malaise and warmth. Harry jerked his hand out of his grip abruptly, like he'd been burned. Malfoy blinked, turning his own hand over in front of him, looking at the back of it.

"What the hell was that?" Harry asked, eyes widened slightly.

Malfoy raised his gaze, meeting his. He shook his head, lips parted in his bewilderment. "I—I'm not sure."

Harry's hand itched to reach for his wand, staring at the man in front of him, but Malfoy's face had twitched into a frown, and he was looking back at his hand again. He appeared just as confused as him, like he didn't know what had happened either. He blinked hard again, found Harry's gaze once more, his expression thoroughly perplexed and slightly apprehensive.

"Potter, I don't—" He stopped, mouth working. "This _—_ this wasn't _my—_ "

Harry spun around, before he could throw a hex his way, and headed for the door.

* * *

He found himself Apparating into Ron and Hermione's apartment. They were bustling around their kitchen, Ron stirring the fry-pan, Hermione slicing vegetables on the chopping board. 

"Harry!" Hermione said, upon seeing him, grinning. She shook a loose strand of curly hair out of her face, escaped from a messy, slightly damp bun on the back of her head. Ron saw him and smiled too, tossing a cheerful _morning Harry!_ over his towel-clad shoulder. "Joining us for breakfast, then?"

Harry made his way to the counters. "Yeah. Anything I can do?"

"Nah, mate," Ron said, throwing him a glance, slightly concerned. "Sit down. We're almost done here anyway, and I'm guessing after whatever happened with Malfoy, you need a breather."

Harry made his way to one of the cabinets to get the plates out anyway, telling him and Hermione about his visit to Malfoy from the start.

At the table, he leaned his arm against Hermione's, hand brushing against the side of hers, strangely craving her warmth. He could still feel the cold press of Malfoy's hand against his own, and suddenly all he wanted was to scrub it clean. He felt fine, he told himself. He was fine. Maybe Malfoy had performed some sort of accidental magic, something inconsequential.

Harry pressed his temple against her shoulder as they waited for Ron to bring over the last of the food to the table. She pressed her cheek back to his head, a soft, amused laugh against his hair. "Are you alright, Harry?"

He huffed, and then nodded, raising his head again. Ron was settling down on her other side. He paused, brows furrowing. "Mate, you don't look very good."

He puffed a breath. "Yeah, I don't know. Just been feeling a bit off ever since _..._ " The malaise had begun to lay thick over him, a sickening feeling in his throat. Something had begun to cloy around his heart, or maybe somewhere deeper. "I don't know what he did..."

"Don't know what…?" Ron straightened, his eyes narrowing. "Did Malfoy do something?"

He was interrupted by a loud sound, a roar of fire from the other room. Molly came rushing inside as Ron and Hermione stood up, and was onto them by the next second, touching Hermione's shoulder, Harry's face with both hands, her eyes looking Ron up and down, frantically asking, "What's happening? Merlin, _what's happening!—_ will someone explain what in the world is _—"_

"Woah, Mum." Ron's grabbing her by the shoulders. "Mum. Hey. Nothing's happening here. Think you're the one that might need to explain what in the world is happening _—_ "

The whereabout-clock was showing all of them in danger. They'd flooed over to the Burrows, made a quick way for it in the living room. Harry had been moving so slowly that he was three steps behind everybody else. He leaned against the wall, trying to focus on the blurry form of the clock, the little golden hands quivering wildly just on the line of _mortal peril._

"Maybe it finally broke or something," Ron said, with a confused, nervous huff. "It's been in the family for ages, hasn't it?"

Later on, sitting beside him on the couch, Hermione casted a diagnostic spell over Harry, and a black cloud rose up into the air. "It's _—_ " She swallowed, inspecting the smoke that dissipated a few seconds after. "It's a curse. From the looks of it, it's a dark one. Oh, Harry, why didn't you say you haven't been feeling well?"

"S'not like I knew," Harry said, sitting back with his head over the back of the couch. He breathed through the nausea. 

"We have to take you to St. Mungos," Hermione said, tugging at his hand. Molly came around his other side, taking his other arm, saying, _come on, dear._ They stood. Harry gently pulled away, insisting he could walk on his own.

"Ever since you came back from the Malfoys', right?" Ron asked, in a low voice. He was flushed up to his ears, his jaw clenched. "There's no way he didn't have something to do with this! You go on ahead. I'll be there in a bit."

He turned on his heel, making for the fireplace. Hermione quickly skirted around the table and caught his arm, put her hands on his face, murmuring something to him that made him loosen slightly after a restless and agitated moment, with an acquiescing nod, even though his face was still ablaze.

At the hospital, after all the spells and diagnostics, Harry's head had begun to throb so much that he could barely pay attention to what was being said. 

The next thing he knew, he was waking up, unable to decipher the amount of time passed. He must have been given something that brought a good part of his awareness back. There was Hermione beside him, Ron at her shoulder, and a Healer, who was introducing herself, relaying to him what had happened. 

"It was dark magic, likely casted or caught from an infected object, and usually passed on through physical contact. The person that passes it on is the primary source _—_ "

The Healer's knowledge regarding curses was limited, however. Now that the curse-breakers were here, they would be giving further explanations once they were all at Malfoy Manor, which was where they would all be heading tomorrow, because Draco Malfoy was an "affected party" and "primary source" _—_ therefore an important component of the curse. The assigned cursebreaker would go to the Malfoy Manor and, if all went well and with full cooperation, would extract a thread of magic from Malfoy's magical core. They would do the same with Harry. Results were promised sometime later in the day.

Then Hermione asked him questions about his meeting with Malfoy, but now with a different context, _did Malfoy seem aware of the curse? Did he insist on any sort of physical contact? Do you remember any way he might have been acting suspiciously?_

"I don't know," Harry answered her, low and hoarse. "I don't know if he was aware he was cursed. He looked strange, a bit sick, I think, but I _—_ " "Not really. Didn't insist, but he did seem like _—_ like he didn't want me to _—_ refuse?" "Honestly, he was the most civil he's ever been during that whole thing."

"That _is_ suspicious," Ron said.

Harry huffed, raspy. "Yeah. I don't know if he _—_ he didn't put up much of a fight when I refused his proposal."

"Yeah. Like he already knew he wouldn't have to. And the whole civil act was just a part of that. Harry, this _can't_ be a coincidence, you know that. Him inviting you over, and then _this_ happening right after? _"_

Silence came over them, long and uneasy, fear and uncertainty coiled up in a corner of the room, and they were all looking away, trying not to acknowledge it.

"He didn't look like..." Harry said, after a while. "He didn't look like he knew what had happened either."

"Just another act, mate," Ron told him. "It was all an act."

Harry thought of Malfoy's face again, ashen in the firelight. "Yeah. Yeah, maybe."

  
  


* * *

  
  


Malfoy looked just as sickly as Harry felt, sitting upright with a forceful dignity. 

The details of the curse were still mostly unclear, besides that it was passed on from the primary source, Malfoy, and would likely demand some sort of contact, that it deteriorated the magical cores, and as it did, it emitted unstable dark magic in an open flow, spreading its sickness.

"The solution," Ezekiel, the cursebreaker, said, "lies in redirecting this unstable magic into a closed circuit. In other words, in order to stabilise the erratic and perpetual flow of the dark magic, it must be so that it remains only between the two main parties, constantly circling between their magical cores."

"And how will this be achieved?" Narcissa was the one to question.

"By a marital bond, of course," Ezekiel said, as if it was very easy.

A long, heavy hush fell over the room. All he could hear was the pounding of his own heart, the cold gush of fear seizing his gut. Ron's hand was heavy on his shoulder, Hermione's warm and tight in his. 

Harry's eyes flicked to Malfoy, a nauseated feeling in his throat that wasn't entirely to do with illness. Malfoy's widened gaze was rooted to nothing in front of him, boring a hole into the carpet.

And then the protests rose, all at once, one above the other.

"I demand an alternative solution," Molly said, clearer and louder than the rest. "This is absurd! Surely there is another way for the curse to break."

"Oh there is another way," Ezekiel said, a satirical cheer to his tone. "Though I'm sure not everybody would be on board with this. Shall I _—_ shall I say it? Yes. Alright." He cleared his throat. "The only other way to break the curse _—_ is death. And oh, I don't mean only one, Mrs. Weasley. I mean both. There will be no emission of unstable dark magic if there is no living magical core for the curse to act on. Now only one may die, but the other still remains, and now the curse is no longer split into two parties, but doubled in one, taking many more with him that much faster, until he, too, eventually passes away."

"Is there no cure at all, Ezekiel?" Bill was asking. He sounded irritated, but like he was trying to keep himself controlled. "What of the previous records of such a curse?"

"As far as my research goes, none of them were curable. A tentative one was attempted in one of the cases, but that had not ended well _—_ an explosion of dark magic that had killed both parties as well as the rest of those in the room. Surely we will not be trying this?" The room was silent. Narcissa stroked back the side of Draco's hair, soothingly. Hermione gripped Harry's hand tighter. "I understand that this is not... _favourable_ , but as of now, I believe the priority should be on saving lives rather than weeping over lost love lives."

Theoretically, a marital bond created a connection between magical cores, a sort of channel that allowed for magic to be shared, even if, outwardly, this showed no visible change or effect. There was support and evidence for this theory, but there were loose ends to it, objections that had no concrete explanations. Even so, this had been the only solution for the last several cases.

"It would be so in this one as well," Ezekiel finished the explanation with, pulling his coat on over his shoulders. He nodded his head in general to the room. "Good day to all." And then was gone a moment later with a tip of his hat, a farewell. 

By the time the discussion came onto details of what would happen afterwards, the potion that had kept Harry aware had worn off again. His head was, once again, pounding and fuzzy, his vision blurry. There was noise, fragmented words again, several voices speaking at once in argument, dying down eventually before starting back up again _—_

Hermione held Harry's hand tighter, grounding in the midst of all the chaos and outrage, the battle for things to tide over in one side's own favour, in Harry's or Draco's, until an arrangement had been accepted, grudgingly so by the compromised. The drawing room was emptied out of all Ministry members, then, leaving the two families alone. Immediately, voices rose again.

" _—_ _no_ proof that this entire thing was not some _rotten_ orchestration _—"_

"We are in no need of stooping to such self-abasing schemes, Arthur," Narcissa responded, coldly. 

"How about you consider what this looks like, Narcissa?" Molly snapped. "For Harry to have come back from a visit that _your_ son perpetuated, and then for all of _this_ to be happening, by _his_ hands no less!" She pointed at Draco. " _—_ you've got what you wanted now, didn't you?"

"And whyever would we put ourselves in such harm's way, Molly?" Narcissa snarled. "If we had such schemes in mind, surely we would not be so obvious about it, and surely we would not risk our own lives as well for it."

"There is no telling what your family is capable of when it comes to getting your hands on power," Bill piped up from the side, soft and clipped, arms crossed over his chest. He nodded at Draco, who was eying him from the corner of his eye, impassive. "And a boy like him?" 

The rest, he left unsaid, his face saying it all. 

"I'm sure you're aware of the legislation recently passed?" Narcissa said, a hollow smile on her lips. "That all service providers now reserve the right to refuse service to former Death-Eaters? Now whether that is fair or not is an argument for another day _,_ but I would not call it fair when my son sought _—_ "

"Mother," Draco tried to interrupt, but his voice was barely there.

" _—_ medical help and was turned away, and we had to resort to seeking a diagnosis from some unreputable underworld Healer instead, which, as we discover now, turned out to be very wrong. He could not even differentiate between a curse and an illness, it seems." Narcissa paused, her face cold, only the slightest raw edge to her voice. "For weeks, I've watched my son live as if he were on numbered days. I have no interest in any sort of power and status if this is what I'd be required to watch for any amount of time."

Later, it was confirmed by the cursebreaker that there was no possibility for the curse to be deliberately passed on. It was transmitted via physical contact, but not necessarily to just anyone. The reasons were unclear, still, as to how it operated when choosing a secondary party, but it was made clear that the curse was what made its choice, not Malfoy, and that was that.

  
  


* * *

  
  


There was no ceremony, only the two of them sitting across from each other in Wizengamot. There were their families, and the wizard that would officiate their marriage, marriage license documents signed by a wand with their magical signature, and when Harry watched Malfoy sign them, and when he was trying to push the ring onto Harry's finger, careful not to touch him, he saw his hand shake just as his own did.

"Can't we just do this part ourselves?" Harry asked, quiet and rough.

"I'm afraid not," the solicitor said to that, and went on to explain how it would be a symbol for the formation of the marital bond, the channel between their magical cores that allowed the circulation of the curse's magic, that it signified an agreement to join them together. 

After the ceremony, all of them flooed into Grimmauld's Palace, Malfoy with bags of his things. Whilst Molly made dinner, Ron and Hermione sat beside Harry. The three of them were in armchairs by the fireplace, Hermione's head pressed to Harry's shoulder. Ron and Hermione were alternating between silence and speaking in murmurs to each other.

When the haze of illness faded, so did the surrealism of it all, and Harry was left only with a deep, aching fatigue in his muscles, a terrible, bright clarity of what had happened. The way his life had changed all in the matter of two days. 

"Is this really happening?" Harry asked, his voice barely there. 

Hermione straightened at the sound of his voice, but she didn't seem to know what to say for a moment. 

Draco was speaking to his mother quietly. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but the movement of his lips were different, a hint of dimples appearing, disappearing. He could only hear the low accents of another language. Harry had a faint memory of him speaking to Beauxbaton boys in Fourth Year. He'd been oddly shy with them, speaking in stuttering French, not quite able to meet their eyes. 

"We'll work something out, Harry," Hermione said, softly. "This isn't a marriage. Not in any real sense. This is just… a temporary solution. We'll find _something,_ okay?"

Harry shook his head, not able to look at her, just looking at the boy he sat across from some minutes ago, signing documents that bound them together in a way Harry couldn't bring himself to think of. Draco's eyes shifted absently, met his own, faltered as his lips slowed. Harry looked away, down at the ring around his finger. His anger was dulled by fatigue, by the way nothing was quite sinking in. "You have your own stuff, 'Mione. This is too much to take on _—_ "

"Your stuff is our stuff," Hermione said, trying to meet his eyes from below, smiling in a wavering sort of way. 

Ron had his arm around the back of Harry's chair, warm and reassuring against the nape of his neck. He kissed Hermione's head, and then paused. He had a feigned frown on his face, as if he were trying to remember something. "How did that muggle saying go again?" He smiled, looking at Harry. "Where there is Hermione, there's always a way."

Harry smiled slightly at that, and it only just soothed a little of something horrible and hollow in him.

  
  
  


* * *

Harry woke up nauseated and burning, like he was under the sun beating down over a desert. A feverish need was licking up beneath his skin, at the core of him, pooling hot, pulling for something with no sense of direction.

In the dark was a silhouette, leaning heavily against the doorframe for a moment. That sickly pull in his chest had a direction now, focusing in on it. It wasn't an urge, anything forceful, only a mere sense, there, towards the body — Malfoy, stumbling towards him, tripping over when he reached the bed.

"What—" 

"We need to," Malfoy's voice was strained, rough, between heavy breaths. He was grabbing his arm, and there came the cooling relief, but it was dissatisfactory, not enough. "I think we need—" 

Harry could hardly see him in the dark. Malfoy was still trembling, his hand tightening around Harry's arm, quivering and frustrated. A sharp jolt of pain had him clench his eyes shut, grit out in a tremor of a breath, "It's not working. It's _not—_ "

Malfoy was trying to fumble the sheets off of him, out of the way, pushing his shirt up in frantic, quick movements to get his hands under it, and Harry swallowed, and only followed where the muddle of discontentment and need for relief took him. 

It was only after the pain and malaise had soothed to a phantom that the pull in his chest relaxed, that clarity shone through, breaking them out of their haze. 

That was when the bewilderment and panic began to set in as well.

Harry quickly scrambled up, Malfoy off of him, leaning on his palms and feet. Malfoy seemed just as confused and wild-eyed about it all, his chest still heaving like Harry's, blinking hard up at the ceiling.

"What was that?" Harry whispered, unable to believe the strangeness of what they'd done. 

"The answer is rather clear, wouldn't you say," Malfoy said, dryly.

A flush still lingered over Malfoy's neck. Harry looked away at the sight of it, quieting, still breathing a bit erratically. Harry hung his head between his knees, elbows on them as he gripped his head, closed his eyes.

"So what? _This_ is how it's going to be from here on?"

"Around every ten hours, give or take."

That was for how long they'd been _—_ how long it had been since _—_

Harry looked away, ahead, wide and fixated at nothing. He wiped his hand down his face, hard. "Ten hours," he repeated in a mutter. "Merlin."

"Yes," Malfoy said, much too blandly for a situation like this. He snapped his fingers and the lights went out. 

Harry watched him for a minute, the silhouette of him as he shifted around on the bed, mentally willing for him to get up and leave at the last second, and then realized that Malfoy fully intended to stay. "You're not staying here."

"Ah, but I am, Potter. You see, the curse is still unpredictable, and just because it acted up after ten hours _now_ doesn't mean it will _only_ act up again in another ten hours. I'm exhausted and in recovery, so. _I'd_ like to sleep as well as I can, and I _do_ not fancy a repeat of stumbling across half the floor to your room whilst feeling like I'm about to die the next time I awaken, as I'm sure you do not either? Hm?" Harry could not see his face, but he could hear the thin and satirical smile in his voice, before he turned over onto his other side, his back to him. 

Harry's shoulders were tensed up to his neck, his anger a sickening burn in his chest. He transfigured a misplaced quill on the nightstand into another pillow and shoved it between himself and Malfoy as a barrier. It startled Malfoy, to Harry's fractional satisfaction.

He laid down on the bed, still breathing unsteadily, but fatigue had begun to set into his muscles, overpowering the turmoil of his emotions, and soon, sleep came over him, fading him away.

* * *

The next morning, when Harry woke up, Malfoy was gone. Downstairs, Ron and Hermione were making breakfast together. 

"Bill's on it," Hermione told him. "He demanded that he be put on the case. I think we just need to learn what kind of bond this is, and then work our way from there, you know?"

Bill was to study the effects of the curse from a thread of both their magic and, "he might come by sometime in the near future for questions," Hermione warned. "Which, I know it will be difficult to talk about because it's so personal and strange _,_ so I just thought you should know beforehand."

Malfoy turned out to be correct in his presumption that the bond acted up sporadically. What they hadn't been able to feel the first time, the two of them asleep when it came in, was _how_ it came in _—_ in slow, erratic ebbs throughout them, deepening into malaise, and then outright nausea.

They also did not know that, though it showed up at around the same time, it did so at different rates for the two of them.

The first time the bond had begun to act up for Harry alone, he'd thought Draco must have been experiencing it as well in the exact same way. He had stumbled into the kitchen whilst Draco was in the midst of his private classes, both he and his tutor staring at him for a confused, blank moment. 

Harry had stood upright in the midst of his malaise, tangled up in a need for relief still somewhat bearable as of yet, but was steadily overtaking his mind. Malfoy had stood up from his chair, apparently having noticed the state of him, had grabbed him by the arm the next second with a quick glance and a polite, _excuse me one moment, please sir_ to his tutor and then careened him off. Harry did, slow and uneven, almost entirely focused on the heat of Malfoy's hand.

"You're not _—_ not feeling it?" Harry had asked, breathless, his voice sounding distant. He'd felt hot, and then cold and shivery, and like he wanted something he didn't have a name for.

"I do feel strange," Malfoy said, threw him a quick glance, a brow raised. He was leading him up the stairs, to the left of the first floor, towards the bedroom. "But not quite like you yet, I suppose."

Malfoy pushed the door open, dragged him inside, shut the door and then crowded him up against the back of it. He'd pushed his hands up the opening of his hem, under his shirt and flat over his ribcage.

"I'm sorry," Harry said after, breathing heavy and slow, his brain feeling heavy and slow too. He swallowed hard, watching Malfoy step back, avert his head away just so. "Sorry. You had to _—"_

"Don't talk, Potter," was what Malfoy responded with. He looked flustered, sort of annoyed, not looking at him. "Don't think about it either."

And they didn't talk about it, or think about it much, on Harry's part. That was a pitfall of mortification and fear and confusion that Harry did not want to fall into, once he'd fallen enough times. It was the curse, Harry reminded himself often, and Malfoy never spoke of it either. Neither of them were in a position to use this shameful vulnerability against the other.

They learned to identify the beginnings, the smallest of signs. They learned that, if they managed to take care of it right from the start, before reaching the breaking point, it was better that way. 

They'd thought, at first, that they could just grip each other's arms as a minor form of their necessitated contact, the tangle of it laid out on a surface. It was still awkward, but much less awkward. It was unsatisfactory in comparison, and even though they'd remained like that for an hour, Harry was left with a discontented sort of feeling, wondering if it was just him, but insisted to himself that it was far better this way.

A week of doing this, the discontentment fed into itself until it became a sort of hunger, like being starved to somewhere beyond reach or comprehension.

It kept Harry half-awake at night, kept him floating back to the surface of lucidity every hour or two, and eventually every half an hour. By the time morning would come, he was left feeling as if he hadn't slept at all.

Malfoy's eyes had sunken into his sockets as well. He was particularly irritable and moody, all satirical quips and expressions, and they'd snap at each other left and right, or complain and fight over everything they were initially trying to force a lot more composure and patience for, like Harry tussling around too much at night, like how long Malfoy took in the bathroom, didn't clean his hair out of the drain, left all his things over the kitchen table, over something seemingly trivial.

"Make me a cup too, would you?" Malfoy didn't look up from where he was scribbling down at a parchment, fingers and eyes moving in intense concentration. 

"Why would I?" Harry asked, waiting for the kettle to boil with his hip against the edge of the counter, arms crossed over his chest. He was groggy and tired, which made him just on the edge of irritated at everything and nothing.

Malfoy seemed to be in a hurry, perhaps doing last-minute homework. He had a blotch of ink at his jaw, his temple. "Because you're already there and I don't want to lose my flow."

Harry rolled his eyes. He turned the stove off and grabbed _one_ cup from the cabinets. "I'm not your servant, Malfoy."

Malfoy raised his brows, a curl at his mouth, as he lifted his head at him. "For Merlin's sake, Potter, how hard is it really to pour _one more cup_?"

"Not that hard," Harry said, shrugging as he made himself tea, well-aware that he might be acting somewhat childish about it but not able to stop himself. It wasn't as if _Malfoy_ wasn't being an entitled prat. "Not that hard to get off your arse and do it yourself."

Then eventually it would escalate into a whole argument until one of them marched off, not to be seen until the curse reared its head once more.

This all came to an end when Malfoy one day pushed his arm away with a frustrated noise, grabbed his wrist and pulled them both up to the wall beside the fridge, stepping back into it. He'd slid Harry's hands under his own shirt, put them to himself.

It was horribly awkward, for the next however many minutes they had to stand like that. Harry was so awkward that he could hardly move, like his body was locked and shut down, though he would shift minutely on his feet every now and then. His gaze was firmly fixed to a spot on the wall, over Malfoy's head, and he kept clearing his throat. Malfoy, on the other hand, was pink all the way from his neck to his cheeks, and he was very still. Harry had tried not to pay much attention to Malfoy's body, to the jut of his throat, the hint of a sharp collarbone. 

Malfoy hadn't been looking at him, though, and Harry found his eyes straying, quick to glance away whenever they caught sight of anything of him. When the curse settled, Malfoy pushed him back and quickly shouldered past him, out the door.

Harry's gaze remained away, stilled, long after Malfoy had gone. In the kitchen, there was only the sound of his own breaths, unsteady and shallow. There was something hot bubbling low in his stomach, and his hands, still left craving in another way.

On a Sunday afternoon, Bill dropped by, as Hermione had forewarned, but he dropped by without a firecall and at an extremely inopportune moment. They quickly jumped away from each other when they saw him there. Malfoy, standing a considerable distance away with his palms on his hips, burning his own mortified hole pointedly through the ground.

Bill, to his credit, hardly reacted, and Harry only understood a while later that he wasn't even surprised, and he learned that, apparently, this sort of thing was there in nearly every kind of bond. He took another thread of their magic, asked all his questions, and then took his leave with a reassuring hand tapping down on Harry's shoulder.

They'd been trying to avoid the bedroom. There was something far too intimate about that, but it was on the first floor and the last place anyone would come looking for them, and if they would, it would be only _after_ scouring the entire ground floor, which was enough time for the announcement—or rather, warning—of a visit. 

Eventually, when Harry's boredom became greater than his lassitude, he returned to the shop and worked late hours to avoid as much as he could of his headache at home, minus the times _it_ had to follow him to the shop in the middle of the day.

Aside from these encounters with Malfoy, the nights and mornings, they opted to stay out of each other's way, and Harry was able to ignore Malfoy's presence in his house for a good while. He didn't know what Malfoy got up to when he wasn't here at Grimmauld Place, and he didn't entirely care to know either.

Then Harry's bathroom was full of Malfoy's hair and skin products. Then, on the kitchen table, were his parchments and his quills and his ink bottles, the ink stains that were left forgotten and uncleaned, and his books and notes strewn about, and Harry would have to pull up his chair to the counter in order to have a place to sit. Then, there began a daily reminder in the evenings when he would play his violins in the drawing room. In the living room was his ancient record player, sitting on a side table brought specifically for it.

"It's the 21st century, for Merlin's sake," Harry muttered to that.

* * * 

  
  


In January, Harry met a man named Elias. 

Elias came into his shop sometime the first week of January, seeking mastery-level books on Herbology. He had a thing for leather jackets, and leaning his elbows on the counter. He was waiting for Harry to bring him his requested books, and when Harry, in trying to take out one book out of a shelf, accidentally knocked over several other books all over his toes, Elias ran over quickly to help him with an exclaimed, _oh Jesus!_ in a small laugh. "Are you alright?" he asked, as he gathered the books up in his arms.

"Thanks," Harry said, and then laughed a bit at himself, rubbing the back of his neck. 

Elias grinned at him. He had a charming sort of grin. "Yeah, no trouble. Did you get what you were looking for?" Harry nodded, holding up the book still in his hand, showing it to him.

The next few days, Elias was coming in every day, looking for one book or the other, until he finally dropped the pretense and asked Harry out for dinner, and Harry said yes.

Harry liked Elias. He liked how they meshed together, how comfortable it was, how effortless it was to talk to him and laugh with him, and when he kissed Harry against the wall beside his apartment room, it was as easy as everything else was with him.

"Do you want to come inside?" Elias murmured, breaths warm against his lips. His hands were on Harry's hips, stroking a thumb at the jut of his hipbone. "Have a drink with me?"

"Yeah," Harry said, just as low, and then smiled. He still felt dizzy and warm from the kiss. He laughed, and then Elias laughed. "Yeah. Let's go inside."

They had drinks together, leaning sideways on the couch, arms sprawled across the back of it. Elias' temple was supported on the curl of his fingers, and their legs touched as they talked in front of the burning fireplace, chasing away the January cold, talking about a lot of things. Elias pointed out the ring on his middle finger, asking, "what's it for?"

Harry spun it around his finger and thought of Malfoy sitting across from him over a table with a marriage document, impassive and sickly. He thought of the haze of his own mind, the illness that had coated his body, and how trapped and heartsick he'd felt in a vague and distant corner of his mind about it all. How he still felt it, now no longer so vague and distant.

"Nothing," Harry said, quietly, turning it around his finger. It was small, a simple band of metal around the knuckle of his finger. A noose on his neck, keeping his life at a halt. "It's just an accessory."

Elias nodded, and then huffed a smile. "Alright," he said, just as quietly, sounding relieved. He reached across, put his drink down on the table. Then he lifted up, leaned forward on his knee and whispered, "God, I was so hoping you'd say that." 

Harry pulled away slightly from his mouth. "Wait, you thought…?"

Elias was still hovering over his lips. "I don't… really know what I thought." He smiled, bit it back, huffed again. Harry followed the movement of his mouth, fixated. "Part of me didn't really want to know."

"I'm not like that," Harry said, but his voice had faded a little at the end, somewhat confused over whether that was a lie or not. _It shouldn't count_ , he thought to himself, but then forgot about it completely when Elias grinned, crossed the inch of distance between their mouths and caught his, hot and open and devouring. 

It was good. So good. It was _great_.

It was great only until Elias' hands slipped up under his shirt, splayed over his ribs and palmed into the arch of his body, and then something at the deepest core of Harry _lurched_ , twisted and ugly.

By the next second, Elias was on the floor, bewildered and blinking at him. Harry had sat upright, hands pushed back into the couch, panting heavy and hard as he stared down at him. For a good minute, he was muddled as to what had exactly happened. Then slowly, it followed, one understanding pulling along into another, clicking together _—_ the curse, and the violent lurch in his chest that had led his body to react of its own accord, a sense of _wrong,_ _wrong, wrong_ washing him in shame. 

It started only a couple of seconds after, the queasy ebb low and deep in his chest, the thread of it that connected to his core, moving all through him.

"I'm sorry," Harry said, thick and low. "Fuck, I'm so sorry."

Elias shook his head, only some of the perturbation and confusion clearing from his gaze. "I don't understand. I thought you were interested…?"

"I was!" Harry said, quickly, wide-eyed. "I am! I just _—_ "

It was growing, deeper and clearer and faster than he was familiar with.

"I have to go. I'm sorry. I just _—_ I really have to _—_ I'm so sorry, Elias _—_ "

He left out the door without waiting for Elias' reaction, without even a goodbye, hardly able to think. He was overwhelmed by the malaise, the suffocating shame and guilt thickening over his sternum. He found the closest Apparition point and went home.

Malfoy was drinking in the living room when Harry appeared, hapless and unsteady in the doorway.

Some old French song was playing from his vinyl record. Malfoy hadn't noticed Harry immediately. When he did, he straightened slightly, his brows twitching upward in an unfathomable expression, but then he'd taken one look at Harry and paused, abrupt and wide-eyed, before his face closed off.

Malfoy hummed, glancing away. He made a small, close-mouthed scoff in his chest, and then looked back at him again, grey eyes almost icy in its colour. "My, my, Potter." A corner of his mouth curled, something of a hollow smile, an almost-sneer. "To be a married man and to engage in such _—_ " His eyes twitched down, over the rumpled state of him, and then with a flick, back up to Harry's face. "cavortings."

"Malfoy," Harry warned. He closed his eyes. "You don't actually care, do you?"

Malfoy's face was very still. He turned his head away, made a sort of apathetic noise. He leaned forward, reaching for the bottle on the table. There was a pause, one that felt longer than it was. He poured himself another finger, not looking at him, and then said, "No, Potter. Frankly, I don't give much of a damn about anything when it comes to you."

 _Just as well_ , Harry thought. "Right. But are you going to _—_ " He stopped, puffed out a hard breath as the nausea roiled in his gut. "to _help_ me or not?"

"Upstairs," Malfoy said curtly.

As he ascended the stairs, grip tight on the railing, he had the odd and terrifying sense, going by Malfoy's demeanour, that he might just deliberately take forever before he came upstairs. 

He didn't, however. It was right as Harry had opened the door of the bedroom that he heard Malfoy's footsteps on the stairs behind him. He leaned beside the door frame on his shoulder, waited until Malfoy had slipped in, closed it shut with a soft click.

Harry turned the lights off, nonverbally, because it was weirder to have to look at each other when they did this. His magic was erratic and everywhere though, so all the items rattled, and then settled. There was a scuff as Malfoy stepped forward in the dark. He smelled strongly of alcohol, seemed drunker than he was when Harry had seen him in the drawing room.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some implied sexual content in this one!

On Saturday, Hermione had come by before breakfast to check on him. She was sitting with a chair pulled up to the counter, reading the papers as she listened to Harry telling her about Elias whilst bustling about the kitchen. She looked up when he got to the way the curse had reacted at the end of the story, frowning.

"And now he probably thinks I'm crazy," Harry ends it on, setting down their breakfast on the table and sitting across from her. He scooted his chain closer to the table. "And he'll never want to see me again."

Hermione hummed thoughtfully. "Well, it must be a sort of ramification against _—_ well, I suppose, infidelity."

"It's not infidelity if I didn't choose this," Harry said, his defenses hiking up. "It's not _cheating_ if _—_ "

"No, Harry!" Hermione shook his head. "No. For goodness' sake, of course not _._ What happened to you, to _both_ of you, it was… disgusting and _—_ and _barbaric_ , and of course you deserve to go out and find people you really want to be with." Harry relaxed in his chair, and then felt chagrined for his premature reaction. She waved his apologetic look away. "I'm just saying, no, it shouldn't really be considered infidelity in the moral sense, but in the eyes of the _—_ the _curse_ , it is. Such curses were used for exactly what it sounds like they would be used for, you know, to force marriages without an escape, to force contact and interaction, and then to ensure neither party can leave or find other people. It never ended very well, you can imagine."

Harry looked down. He touched a finger to his mug to check its temperature. It wasn't too hot. He took a sip. 

"I did feel ashamed though. After," Harry told her, wrapping both hands around his mug. "I mean, _really_ ashamed. But it wasn't like… I wasn't ashamed before that. I was just _..._ it almost felt like _—_ "

"Like it wasn't really you feeling it?"

"Yeah." Harry nodded. "Like it came from somewhere else, maybe. Now I just feel awful for _—_ " He huffed, put his elbows on the table and wiped down his eyes. "Merlin _—_ for leaving Elias like that, you know? I just _left_ him there."

Hermione paused at something over his shoulder. Harry turned to look, bemused, and found Malfoy standing in the doorway, his face pale and eyes bloodshot from a hangover, his hair damp from a shower. 

They were quiet all the way until he took his coffee, grabbed one of his textbooks from the table and left.

"Is that all he does, do you think?" Harry asked, out of nowhere, scoffing. "Just studies? He was studying all through the hols too."

"He was also hosting charity galas, apparently," Hermione said, going back to reading through the papers again.

Harry did not know that. "He was?"

Hermione looked at him. "How long has it been since you read the papers, Harry?"

"Since...you know." Since the whole thing with Malfoy started, and the papers were just filled with a lot of bollocks, a lot of bollock opinions, a lot of bollock advice and bollock conspiracy theories _—_ Malfoy got the brunt of those _._ It was annoying, all these people speaking about Harry's personal life. Hell, even about _Malfoy's_ life. Did these people have nothing better to do?

"The news is old at this point," Hermione said. "People have very mixed views about it, you can imagine. You can also imagine which side most of them are on."

"Right," Harry said. 

"Do you two talk at _all_?" 

Harry frowned. "Why should we? It's not like we have anything to talk about."

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "You're both in a similar situation. I think that gives you plenty to talk about."

"Does he _seem_ like the sort of person to you who would want to _talk_?"

When they weren't actively ignoring each other and pretending the other didn't exist, they were arguing. Whatever forced patience they'd been trying to maintain at first, was gone by the next week at most, and all over again, they were arguing about Harry not being able to stay still at night, about Malfoy's shite all over the kitchen table and his damned wireless babbling nutty theories about the two of them again _—_ Malfoy, apparently, found some of them rather hysterical, laughing with a knuckle to the teeth of his grin.

There were also the isolated incidents, such as when Harry made the mistake of settling into the right side of the bed at night instead of the left, unsuspecting and unaware of what he'd brought on himself. 

Malfoy had spent a good five minutes arguing with him about that too, because _that's_ my _side, Potter, that's_ always _been my side—_ while Harry kept trying to work out what the point of this entire argument was, _Merlin, Malfoy, what does it even matter? No really, I don't understand, what the hell kind of difference does it make which side you sleep on?_ while Malfoy went on and on about how he'd never be able to sleep on the left, _why don't you just stick to your damned side if it's all the same to you?_ until Harry finally caved, moving to the left with a roll of his eyes and throwing the blanket over himself, just wanting to go to sleep.

There was the tussle over who got to have the first shower in the morning. Harry's stance had been that he got to it first, and Malfoy took too long in there, and he had _work_ , _what do_ you _have, Malfoy?_ And Malfoy's stance was, well, a dry, _only two ways to go about it, Potter. Either you let me go first or we go in there together_ , to which Harry could only stare at him, and then mutter, _Malfoy, what the fuck?_ Malfoy had shrugged, arms crossed over his chest, adamant about getting his way. Harry mostly let him win that one after, if only to avoid similar conversation. 

He was also fairly certain Malfoy often stared at Harry like he was the bane of his existence, when Harry wasn't noticing it. He'd caught those bored, half-fronded eyes fixed on him once, jaw supported by a hand. Harry's gaze had lowered before darting right back up to him, frowning, hand faltering around the knife he was lathering the cheese on his toast with. Malfoy had promptly sneered at him, hand moving out from under his head, turning away, leaving Harry to stare at his back.

And then there was their morning routine.

"Do you mind?" Harry asked, upon seeing the scattering of notes and potion-related things on the kitchen table again. He was holding his plate and mug in hand, his book under his arm. The little space that Malfoy had been leaving him was gone again.

"I do mind, actually," Malfoy said without looking up. Harry glared at him, and Malfoy flicked his eyes up at him from under the bow of his head. He sighed, as if Harry was the one that had inconvenienced him, waving his hand to let some of his notes push up over each other.

It was still too small. Harry had a fierce urge to shove everything off the table, or to upend it completely. He huffed out a hard breath, plopping down in his chair, dropping his novel on top of Malfoy's stuff to satisfy a fraction of the petty, vengeful urge to irritate him.

Malfoy spent a minute very silent, his glare burning on Harry. Harry pointedly ignored him, flipping through pages. "Get that off, Potter."

"Get your shite off the table so I don't have to put mine on yours," Harry retorted, still flipping through the pages, and then flipping backwards when he saw that he was too far ahead.

"For Salazar's _—_!" Malfoy gritted out. "Go sit somewhere else, why don't you?"

"Yeah. _Where_ exactly?"

"The floor. The counter. The bloody stove, Potter! I don't give a damn!"

Harry rubbed his hands down his face, fingers hard over his eyes under his glasses. "God, you're _—_ you're so fucking annoying. Malfoy, this is _my kitchen table—_ "

" _Your_ kitchen table?" Malfoy laughed, ironic and wry, a sneer. "Hah! No, husband dear, this is _our_ kitchen table now, because we are bloody _married—"_ He'd spat the word out, hardened in satire around the edges. "in case you've _—!_ "

"We're not," Harry said, coldly, cutting him off. He stood up, abrupt, the chair screeching backward. "We are _not,_ because I did not want this. And I won't accept something I never asked for."

Malfoy was silent, and suddenly the kitchen was leaden, the air heavier than before. He had a rigid expression, sitting back in his chair as he met Harry's eyes, just as cold.

"Typical, self-absorbed Potter. It's always _you_ that things happen to, isn't it?" Malfoy said, with a hollow sort of smile. "You don't think that I had dreams and ambitions as well? Ones that are hindered now because I am stuck to you?"

Harry huffed. "I didn't say that."

" _—_ you think I like this very much myself? Living with you here in this house?" Malfoy leaned forward, slowly, mouth curling around the edge of a sneer. " _I_ had to leave everything behind." 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Elias didn't come by again until over a week later. He wanted answers. The puzzling shift in events of that night, he said, drove him mad. Harry didn't know what to tell him, couldn't say anything. To say he _was_ interested would be to give him false hopes for the future. To tell him the truth was unimaginable. He let the silence confirm what Elias believed, apologised around a lump in his throat. Elias never came back. 

He spent much of the next several days angry and despairing for his future. He drank himself into stupor on the weekends, his dour mood following him with his hangover the next morning. 

Malfoy was sitting across from him at the table, having oh-so-generously left some space for Harry to have his breakfast again.

Harry was watching him from over the rim of his mug, getting a bit distracted from his own thoughts by the way he looked. The daylight was shrouding the kitchen bright. Malfoy was regarding his parchment, contemplative, elbows atop the table, his coffee half-drunk next to them. The tip of his quill was dipping at the centre of his bottom lip, a hint of teeth at the top. His attention kept focusing itself on that.

Malfoy's eyes flicked up at him from under the lower of his lashes. They curled, slightly, having left a feather dust of shadows high on his cheeks. Harry glanced away quickly, down at his drink. He wasn't sure if he was imagining the lingering of Malfoy's gaze on him, but he was much too aware of the haze of him in his peripheral vision.

Harry looked up after a long moment, slow and furtive from under his own brows, upon the blurry movement of Malfoy's head, a slight turn of it. A quirk was at one corner of Malfoy's lips—all crooked canine, the hint of the fold of a dimple. He was studying his parchment, quill still against his mouth. Then he straightened, shoulders rising, and began to write again.

Harry spent much of that day closed up in his room, faintly listening for the violins playing down in the drawing room. He was searching through a book on Bonds for anything related to his predicament. He found a section of spells, growing so bored he was only paying half of his attention to it. There was one that managed to freeze the flow of magic for a short time, another that reversed it, and another that exchanged the state of magical cores. It was all useless to him. He came out only to make himself a sandwich when he grew hungry. 

He felt it first, that afternoon, while he was in the kitchen fixing himself something to eat. Harry let his plate drop with a light clink and clutter, gripping the edge of the counter in an onslaught of frustration and despair. He breathed through that for a moment, and then turned around, jaw set tight, as he went over and jostled Malfoy's arm, one of their many non-verbal signals. He'd been reading at the kitchen table, thick-framed glasses low on his nose, but he didn't look irritated this time, just looked up at him in that forever bored way of his, politely feigning interest. He must not be feeling it yet.

"Ah," Malfoy said, when he realised. He put his book down and uncrossed his legs. "Alright then." He stood up, moving aside, waving him onto the chair. "Sit."

"Sit?" Harry repeated, bemusedly. They never sat down when they did this. "Why?"

"I don't feel like standing for twenty minutes today, Potter," Malfoy said.

Harry sat down gingerly when Malfoy cocked an eyebrow.

What he'd expected was for Malfoy to drag another chair over, sit alongside him and do this from sideways.

What he had not expected was for Malfoy to settle down right between the spread of his knees, at his feet. He was startled, staring down at him wide-eyed and frozen. Malfoy's hands held him firm against the chair, warm to his skin. The beginnings of arousal pulsed low in his stomach. Malfoy was looking back at him with a perfectly bland sort of innocence. 

Harry didn't look at him all throughout, hands gripping tight around the sides of the chair, shoulders and arms tensed. A hot flush was spreading up his neck, his ears, his breathing unsteady. He made Malfoy let him go too early, pushing his hands off, the curse only half-satisfied at the core, and left the room without looking back.  
  


* * *

  
  


That night, Malfoy had come into the drawing room when Harry was sitting on the couch, pulling his socks off. He'd come back just now from Ron and Hermione's. He spared Malfoy a glance, saw him in his white long-sleeved shirt and black bottoms, towelling his damp hair, and then quickly looked away. The events of the afternoon, which he'd blessedly put out of his mind, came crashing back.

"How was your outing?" Malfoy asked. He didn't sound like he cared much for the answer.

"Good," Harry said, shortly. He picked up his drink from the side table, turning his head away to watch the fire in the hearth, dancing around the logs, feeling strange and uneasy.

There was silence. Harry didn't hear the sound of Malfoy leaving, as he was expecting. He knew that he was still standing there, but he didn't want to look up. He heard the pads of his bare feet a moment later, only it was coming closer. 

Harry was confused, had lifted his head just as the couch dipped on either side of his thighs, one following the other. Malfoy had crossed the room, clambered over him, straddling him. His hands were on the cushions, over Harry's shoulders, weight lifted on his own legs. Not touching, but close enough to feel the slight pull between them, as if something else that wasn't them liked this proximity and heat. Harry blinked, vision focusing onto Malfoy's face, unable to speak. 

Malfoy moved forward, tried to angle their mouths together for a kiss. Harry turned his head away, jaw clenching around a lock of muscle, even as arousal weaved sharp down his spine, coiled at the root of him. Harry wanted to think it was not his own. "What are you doing?" His voice sounded hoarse, strained to his own ears.

Malfoy's face was just a little over his, tilted very close to it. Harry felt the nearness of him with a painful vividity, as if his senses had heightened. "You want me." It was a breath near Harry's ear, a low timbre of his voice. "I've seen the way you look at me."

Harry closed his eyes, throat dry, his chest moving shallow and unsteady. His hands craved. His body craved. He could smell the intoxicating scent of his body, the fancy cologne, the shampoo in his damp hair.

"It's alright. It's not your fault," Malfoy murmured, a mirthful inflection in a near-whisper. Harry didn't have to look at him to know he was smirking, all that arrogance that Harry knew so well. "I know what I look like."

"I don't feel anything for you."

Malfoy hummed, his temple close to the side of his hair. His mouth was near his jaw. Harry could smell his fresh toothpaste. "It's just sex, you know. It doesn't have to mean anything."

"You're mocking me."

"Not so."

Harry turned his head back, stared at him, trying to read him. It felt surreal and dreamy, not unlike one of those dreams that left him ashamed and embarrassed upon waking, hard and wet, because they were about the one person he shouldn't have been having them about. 

His gaze dropped, following the line of Malfoy's throat, the fine skin there. Need pulsed at the pit of his gut, pulled in his chest, somewhere deeper. Shame drove it the other way, sick and tight.

"I don't think we should—" Harry said, raspy. He swallowed hard, tried not to stare at his mouth, his own watering at the thought of exploring. He wanted to slide his hands up the opening of his shirt, feel the heat of him, the planes of his bones. Wanted his body hot against his. Wanted his hands and his legs around him. Wanted. Just wanted, desire a deep and wide and hollowing well.

"Why?" Malfoy was whispering, close to his ear, teeth a slight scrape against it. There was still that smirk on his maddening mouth. "It's not like we'll have anybody else, Potter. Not for a long time."

Something in Harry gave at that, only half-aware of the sense that maybe he would have anyway, that he was only just waiting for a reason. He ignored ever having the thought, ever feeling terribly filthy, and pulled Malfoy in by the back of his knees, one after the other, Malfoy falling closer, pressing against him, gasping. 

Harry cursed, a strangled gasp of his own, at the violent flare of thrill between their bodies, the electrifying pull between them, and he could feel him now. All of him. All of his weight, his heat, legs locked tight around his thighs. Malfoy pushed his fingers into his hair, tried to tilt his face up for a kiss. 

Harry pushed him down and pinned him to the couch, pressed flush against him between the spread of his legs. Rolled against him, both of them gasping again, trembling from the overwhelming surge of exhilaration and pleasure, just by that alone.

His mouth was dragging down the side of his throat, all tongue and teeth, sucking heavy at the flutter of his pulse, heard him inhale a sharp breath — pushed his shirt up to his underarms and over his head, palmed him broad and thorough everywhere.

Malfoy laughed, all quivering, thick puffs of wild bliss, squirmed against him, and Harry felt it too. He felt it all with that crystal intensity, heightened to the point that he was drunk and slow with it, and still yet the clearest, most burning thing he'd ever experienced. It overcame his senses, the two of them searching for little releases with every touch and movement and feel.

All there was left was Malfoy _,_ his body, his hot and tender skin, and the warmth of his hands, encouraging, tightening where they dug up into his hair as Harry mouthed at the skin of his bare shoulder. The sound of his voice, sin and euphoria in his ear, breathlessly whispering, _that's it._ _That's it._

  
  


* * *

  
  


Harry spent the entire day on edge as always, waiting for the contented hum to whirr away into the same old unease. He waited for people to come in while reading, half-distracted by distorted images of last night, trying to ignore every thought of it. Eventually he almost forgot about being on edge, waiting for the curse to act up, and only fully realized at the end of the day that the tangle of magic at his core was still quiet, still content.

He went upstairs first thing when he reached home. Malfoy was in the bedroom, doing some late-night studying on the bed. He looked up when he heard the door open, pushed back shut with a click behind Harry. 

"Did you feel it?" Harry asked him, as a way of greeting. He felt good, lighter than he'd had since months. "I mean, at all?"

Malfoy eyed him for a long moment, unfathomable as always.

"No," he finally said, cocking his head thoughtfully. Then, to Harry's surprise, he huffed, a small upturn at one corner of his lips. A near-genuine smile. 

It pulled a grin out of Harry, slow and warm at his cheeks. He glanced away, bit his lower lip around the smile, shaking his head. "This has to be a good thing, doesn't it?" He felt mildly uncertain, then, his joy shaken loose as he frowned. "I think."

"I'm sure it is," Malfoy said, his voice slow, and Harry looked at him. He was thinking as he spoke. "I _—_ " His face fell, flushed, but he straightened quickly as if to compensate, clearing his throat quickly as well. He was doing everything too quickly. He raised his head to look at Harry, just a bit too high. "I believe this may be related to…"

Harry waited for him to finish his sentence, raising an eyebrow. Malfoy didn't finish his sentence, instead seemed to be staring at Harry as if he was waiting for _him_ to magically read his mind. When Harry obviously didn't, he pressed his lips together. He opened his book, quickly again, muttering something to himself that may have been _not my fault_ and _imbecile_ together in the same sentence.

And just like that, whatever moment of near civility they'd had was over. Harry rolled his eyes, annoyance taking precedence over his puzzlement. "Right, then." He had already turned around, opening the door. "Whatever. I'm going to take a shower."

  
  


* * *

  
  


And so a wall broke down in that way, in that putting their hands on each other started to feel less awkward when they've already had their hands everywhere there was to have on each other. 

It was impersonal and detached, all primal, no meaning. They never kissed, too intimate and something of meaning. They never talked about it outside of what they needed from each other when they were doing it. The level of sexual appetite, it seemed, would be the only thing they had in common. 

Sometimes they just didn't talk at all, besides a low murmur of, _do you want to?_ They didn't always bother taking all their clothes off, but Harry saw Malfoy's Dark Mark and the scars his _Sectumsempra_ had given him in a way he hadn't the first night, when he could only bring himself to touch him but not look at him properly. 

It was sickening to look at, both of them in conflicting ways, and he had only a few seconds of black cloaks in masks and bloody running water in a bathroom before Malfoy had shoved him down onto the bed, hand flat on his chest as he climbed over on top of him, bending over him with his mouth at his neck and a hand beside his head. 

For a time after, Malfoy didn't bare his body in the light, only in the dark, and Harry never asked. Harry never asked either when Malfoy did, again, with his history hidden under glamours.

Sometimes the curse would act up days later, and their hands would escalate into the movement of their bodies instead. Sometimes Malfoy would pull his shirt up over his head in the darkness of the bedroom, crowd him in against the wall until Harry could feel all of him. Sometimes Harry would push his lower back against the desk, and Malfoy would jump himself onto it, hands on his shoulders, letting Harry slip between the spread of his legs. 

What it also meant was that they were not quite so awkward around each other whilst they were doing the necessitated contact, and the discomfort was what had kept them quiet and not looking at each other. Now it meant they talked, and when they talked, they got annoyed at each other and fought, and some days, if it didn't end in sex or just a calm and bored departure, it ended in childish shoving and pulling at each other's shoulders and chest and faces, as if they were in school all over again. Sometimes even _that_ ended somewhere else entirely.

Harry would fall asleep in bed with an unease that was all his own after he'd had sex with Malfoy, his chest knotted up as he wondered if it had been the bond after all, if it had made them do what they'd done in the drawing room, what they kept doing for many mornings and nights after. Harry didn't know what was worse, for it to be all his own, or for it to not be of his own will.

Harry tried not to dwell on that much either, as he did with most things related to Malfoy and the curse now. He kept it locked away without a sound in his mind, locked away inside those moments, the haze of surrealism cocooned over them, in the dark, never to be acknowledged. 

And so, all that it meant, and the thick layer of gunk that had furled itself around his heart every time, was locked away inside those moments too.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Hermione flooed in next Friday night. 

"Hello," she said just as she came in, a tired but broad smile on her cheeks. She was brushing floo ash and powder off of her blouse. There was a book under her arm. She walked over, kissed the raise of Harry's smiling cheek.

"Hello," Harry said, hugged her tight. When he let go of her, he looked back to the fireplace. "Ron coming too?"

"In a bit," she said, touching his shoulder and following him to the kitchen, where the pan was wafting up smoke on the stove, the smell of tomato and curry spices filling the air. "Is Malfoy here?"

"No." Malfoy had left around the time Harry got home, but he hadn't said where. Harry didn't ask either.

"Oh, alright." She shook her bushy hair out of her face, pausing at the mess on the table, and then dragged one of the chairs over to the counter, Harry doing the same. She put the book down on the countertop. "Well, so. I brought this _—_ it's an old and comprehensive book on bonds that's very hard to come by. The amount of strings I had to pull! Also, Bill's learned some things in the last month. Everything I tell you, pass it on to Malfoy, will you?" She waited for Harry's nod, and then continued, shifting around on the chair to get comfortable. "Bill wanted to come by and tell you all this himself, but he's been swamped up in cases. He's been running himself ragged researching on the curse in his free time _—_ oh, Harry, no, it's _—_ "

Harry glanced down at his hands, only just conscious of the frown on his face as the guilt sank down on him.

"He loves you," Hermione told him, grabbing his hand on the countertop, meeting his eyes sternly. "Bill _loves_ you, so of course he'll do everything he can to save you."

"I know, but _—_ "

"No buts. It's not your fault and you don't get a say in what people want to do out of love for you. Your life _—and_ Malfoy's _—_ can quite actually be on the line with this. Do you realise that?"

"Realise what?"

They both turned around at the same time to look at the newcomer, Harry's smile growing on his face. Ron spread his arms wide as he entered, and Harry got up and hugged him. He let go with a pat to Harry's shoulder.

What Hermione had to say was, there were thousands and thousands of types of bonds. Some bonds could be surgically untangled and broken. Others were much more complicated. Some were dark, others were not. Some had symptoms, others not. Some were driven by lust and sex, others by mere proximity and physical contact, and by far the most complicated, were those that were rooted in emotions.

"Like the one you and Malfoy have," Hermione added, quietly.

And that did not make sense to Harry at all. "But we barely even... in that case, we'd just be _—_ " He gestured, incomprehensibly, fumbling through words. " _Dead_!"

"I don't know. Even emotional bonds are an entire category all on its own, you know. Different types of it. Some even thrive on negative emotions, did you know?" She huffed, a mix of weirded and awed. "Okay. So maybe yours isn't affected by negative emotions, but then in that case, it would be on the basis of positive emotions, so it _would_ be affected by a _lack_ of positive emotions to some degree which _—_ "

"Also does not make sense," Harry interrupted. "And, if it _is_ the case, _also not good_ , because we don't have any positive emotions between us. Neutral, maybe, like when we ignore the fact that the other even exists. And don't even get me started on how absolutely annoying and _infuriating_ he is when _—_ "

"Nobody's getting you started, mate. _Nobody_ ," Ron said, sitting back, putting his hands up with a laugh. "We heard you the first hundred times. We know."

"Sometimes it's partially held up by positive emotions of even one of the parties. You know, like, if one person's in love?" Hermione said. Harry snorted at that. She shrugged, laughing too. "Yeah, I know. Impossible. But just putting it out there! There's also, maybe, if there's some sort of physical contact... That manufactures positive emotions in almost every kind of bond, really." Harry could not bring himself to snort at that. Hermione gave him a quick glance, and then back down to the book, tapping at a line. "Sexual pleasure is the peek of emotional highs in such bonds, the relieving effects of which can last for days after."

There was a long pause after that, in which Harry sat very still, and then finally managed a somewhat strained, "oh." Thankfully, that got buried under the sound of Ron clearing his throat very loudly.

"Right. Well. I'm still confused as to how these two are alive," Ron asked, waved at Harry vaguely, his face quivering into an awkward smile, or rather, grimace. "There's got to be some sort of mistake, right?"

Harry's brain, in that moment, was very intensely stuck on everything he should not have been thinking about. _But it's just the bond, it's just blowing off steam,_ he reminded himself.

It meant nothing. Nothing beyond that they both had needs, and nobody else to fulfil them. A last resort and an only choice, just until this was all over and they could find other people.

"It's the... " Harry's mouth went dry, running on its own before he could even understand why it was. "The physical contact… you know. It's _—_ sometimes we have to… to do… but obviously it means nothing, it's all very clinical _—_ "

"It's alright," Hermione said, smiling at him reassuringly and squeezing his arm. "It's alright, you know. You don't have to… Bill would say something like that would be there in almost every bond that was symptomatic, or it wouldn't be a symptomatic bond at all."

"Oh yeah, totally!" Ron said, a bit too loudly.

They stayed for dinner, the awkwardness dissipated entirely by then. By the time dinner was over, the whole thing was only a faint weight in the very back of his mind. Hermione was telling him about her pet peeves when living with Ron, his dirty socks everywhere and how he slept in them, and how he forced her to watch his stupid reality shows with him on weekend mornings. Ron gave her a mock-scowl, but it broke into tenderness when she pushed her head against his shoulder playfully, laughing, kissing him.

"Ugh, gross," Harry said, even though he didn't mind. He was hiding his eyes, a laugh rising in his chest when Ron shoved at his shoulder with a, "Oh right! Forgot there were children in the house!"

That night, when Malfoy got back, Harry told him everything that Hermione passed on to him from Bill, sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to him as he pulled his shirt on over his head, and then his track bottoms up his legs.

"So you know, you can leave now. You don't have to stay here anymore. We could just…" Harry didn't finish the rest of the sentence. Still, Malfoy hummed a second or two after, like he understood, sounding noncommittal and somewhat half-asleep. He got rather sleepy after sex. Harry, on the other hand, got riveted up. "Yeah. Like every few days, maybe?"

  
  


* * *

  
  


Harry dreamed in a delirius haze, falling in and out of a faint awareness of himself, of a feather-light brush over his hand, upturned on something soft _—_ almost imperceptible over the loose curling of the backs of his fingers, the tuck of a touch into the haven of his half-folded palm, fading away as the dream fell into another dream, full of incoherent, distorted images that made no sense to him when he awoke.

He stirred to the sunlight in his face, his vision bright red behind his closed eyelids. He stretched out on the bed without opening his eyes, yawned cavernously, and realized only seconds later that his elbow didn't knock into any pillows.

The bathroom felt empty as he eyed the shelves, standing under the shower and letting the water run down his hair and shoulders and back. There was just his shaving cream and kit, the same shampoo he'd been buying for years. There was just his toothpaste, his mouthwash and soap. Nothing fancy and expensive.

There was no sound of bustling around in the kitchen when he went downstairs. It was completely quiet, but for the chirps of birdsong outside _—_ no wireless rambling the day's news, or an old English song, or one of those French songs that he sometimes heard being hummed in the shower. The kitchen table was clean for the first time in months.

"I have a kitchen table," Harry said to himself, feigning surprise.

He spent Saturday cleaning up his house thoroughly, and then in the evening, he painted a piece and read a thriller novel, waiting for the violins to play up from downstairs, and then remembered there would be no violins playing up from downstairs.

On Sunday, he spent dinner with the Weasleys and went home with Ron and Hermione, now that he could. They graciously do not ask about this new development, and the three of them spend hours awake talking about nothing, and then he stayed the rest of the night on their couch, just because he could, and they didn't mind.

He helped them with breakfast the next morning and then watched the two of them standing at the floo, Ron grabbing Hermione's robes for her from the bedroom because she'd forgotten to bring it with her. She was late because she'd spent too long being engrossed in furious revision of her notes. Ron pulled it on her shoulders for her, Hermione's arms raising to let him, switching notes between her hands. She gave him a smile, a departing kiss to his cheek that he tried to return at the same time in a hurry, and then, with a wave and a _bye Harry!_ they flooed away, one after another.

Malfoy came by every four days, just as discussed, always an hour after Harry got home on work days, because _your timings are much too fickle, Potter, and I_ will _not be arsed to adapt nor accommodate. I have things to do, places to be._ At the exact same time on weekends too, either stood at the fireplace in his high-collared, starched shirts and neat, pressed trousers, hand in his pocket, brushing floo ash off of himself.

Most of the time, he'd just walk past him to the bedroom, expecting Harry to follow. Other times, they'd just fuck right there on the couch.

Sometimes the curse was still quiet. Sometimes it had only just begun to grow into his usual, moment-to-moment unease. They tried to stretch out a bit more, but half-way through the fifth day, when they were both in the midst of work and social outings, it had reared itself, and so, four days was decided to be the limit of their ability for separation.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Around mid-October, Bill firecalled Harry and told him about a curse-breaker who was willing to travel to Britain and help them.

"It's something to consider," he said. "I owled him a thread of the bond. He managed to work out the lifespan of the curse, Harry. Twenty years."

Everything became surreal after that, too dim and too sharp. Bill's voice was a distant drone, his mind still buzzing on his words, all that it meant.

Twenty years. That was twenty years of Harry's life, gone. Just like that.

"Harry?" Bill sounded concerned. "Are you alright?"

"I _—_ twenty years? " Harry asked, mouth dry. He blinked hard and fast.

"Give or take," Bill said, and then sighed, shook his head. He looked haggard. "But just because the lifespan of the curse is twenty years doesn't mean it _will be twenty years._ That's what I called to tell you, kid. This cursebreaker knows how to alter bonds. He says he can bring yours and Malfoy's down to a quarter of its life. Five years, but no less."

Harry had a hard time wrapping his head around that. "Really?" He sounded skeptical, trying not to be too hopeful. "It can't really be that easy."

"It's not... it's a risky procedure. Fairly modern as of yet. Fifty to sixty percent chances of success, and even then, there's always going to be _something_ . Some sort of change. Like maybe it becomes more unpredictable. More intense. But like I said, it's just something to consider if _—_ " He stopped there. Harry heard it, though. _If there's nothing else_. "Maybe a last resort, you know."

And then it was November, an entire year since that day. Harry thought about it, often, almost obsessively. He tried to imagine living a life like this until he was forty, and felt his lungs seize at the thought. 

Harry went through books, searching for histories, for hope, for success stories, but the only success stories he found were of those that fell in love through it, or that had already been in love before it happened to them, and managed to make it all work. Before this, people just lived with it or died from it, one way or another.

Harry wasn't even afraid of dying from it so much as he was of living with it.

 _Fairly modern as of yet_ , Bill had said of the alteration procedure. It was only just a recent development. He didn't say it was the first thing closest to a solution ever found when it came to cursed bonds, the only one there was as of yet. He'd known Harry would latch on, then, to this uncertain answer, and that was what he did.

He talked about the alteration to everybody who would listen, just considering the idea of it. He talked about it to Ron and Hermione when he stayed another night on their couch, to Neville in an owled letter, to Andromeda while she was feeding Teddy in his high chair, and George at the joke shop while he arranged his shelves, and Molly, Ginny, Arthur and Charlie at the table on the Weasley's Sunday dinner. 

They all seemed like they didn't know what to say. They all said similar things. Things like, _It's your call, Harry_ and _they both seem so difficult, I don't know_ and _I hope you work it all out, mate_ . Sometimes they seemed worried about the risks more than the idea of him being trapped, saying, _I hope you know what you're doing, Harry_ . Sometimes he would ask them, _what would you do, if you were in my place?_ Most of them said something along the lines of, _I don't know what I would do._

"Promise me you won't let this influence your decision?" Ginny had said, as they strolled through the Burrows' backyard. She waited for Harry's obliging nod, an exaggeratedly solemn jerk, before she continued. "I'd… try. You know. If there wasn't anything else? I can't imagine living like that. Stuck to someone all the time." 

_If I'm honest, Harry…_ Neville had written in his letters. _I could be wrong, I don't know. But it just seems to me like you already know what you want to do. You're just waiting for somebody to tell you it's the right thing. But nobody can tell you that, Harry. That's only for you and Malfoy to work out._

"No," was all Malfoy said to him, plain and simple, cutting him off in the middle of his riveted explanation. Harry stopped pacing, turning to look at him where he sat upright on Harry's couch, his shirt untucked and missing a top button, sleeves open, fingers at one wrist working on buttoning them. He looked bored, ruffled up, his hair a wavy tousle behind his ears, ending where a flush always lingered at his neck and jaw after sex.

Harry shook his head. "But _—_ "

"No."

Harry stared at him. Kept staring at him. He turned fully to him, with a step of each foot. "Did you not hear me? The curse could last _twenty—_ "

"Did you not hear yourself?" Malfoy said, narrowed his eyes. "Fifty percent chance of success?"

"Fifty to _sixty—_ "

" _Fifty_ percent chance of _failure_ ," Malfoy spoke over him, loudly. "What do we know about what such failure entails? Perhaps the lifespan becomes doubled instead! Perhaps we both die!"

"Or perhaps we become free by the time we're twenty-four, Malfoy," Harry said, his voice cool, simmering beneath the surface. "Not forty."

They stared at each other, both of them unwavering.

"I don't understand," Harry said, quieter. "I thought you'd be more eager to end this sooner."

"Sorry to disappoint," Draco said, just as quietly. His jaw was tight, his eyes cold. "But I'm not very eager to end my life all too soon."

"We're not going to die, Malfoy, come on," Harry said, in a desperate scoff. He ran a hand down his face, spread it out, the other palm on his hip. "Maybe… _maybe_ the worst thing that happens is that it just doesn't work, and we're _—_ " Harry faltered, swallowed hard. "And we're stuck together for twenty years after all."

"We don't _know_ what could happen, Potter. Why can't you understand that?"

"Merlin," he whispered, turning away from Malfoy. He ran both hands down his face, let them stay there. He felt like he might scream or cry, felt his helplessness and desperation and confinement like a violent, writhing thing in his chest. It was only when he had something of a grip on himself that he whirled back to face Malfoy. Malfoy was looking at him, his brows furrowed. "Do you want this?" Harry asked, the slightest tremor in his voice, gesturing his hand wide in general. "This life that we're living?"

There was nothing said.

Harry stepped closer. Malfoy followed his movement with his eyes, very still. "I'd rather risk it than live twenty years of a life that I don't want, because the only other option we have is to live in this _—_ this stupid fucking sham of a marriage, to have to suffer each other in our lives and see each other all the time and _never_ be with someone that we actually love! Do you want that, Malfoy? Because I don't."

Malfoy's brows were creased, staring at him. His chest was moving slow and heavy. "I _—_ no." He sounded strange, a bit strained. He straightened, cleared his throat, quickly, "No, I suppose not. I"d rather… not live like this."

Harry nodded. "Yeah." 

They finally looked away from each other, uncomfortable. 

"I'm not agreeing just yet," Malfoy said. "I need time to think."

"Okay," Harry said, swallowed, nodded again. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


The Curse-Breaker who would operate on the curse was a tall man in a long coat, black hair slicked back, a suitcase in hand. His name was Xavier. A Healer would be assisting in the procedure, Francine, who contrasted entirely with Xavier's intimidating demeanour. 

He and Malfoy were made to sign a contract at her office, sitting together in adjacent chairs. The contract had several stipulations, among them being that:

1) Both parties were well-aware of the level of risk and uncertainty involved in this procedure, and that if anything were to go wrong, it was agreed that the curse-alterer and the medimagical staff would not be held responsible or liable to charges.

2) The curse-alterer and medimagical staff were legally mandated, to the best of their ability, to take any and all measures in order to ensure both lives were secured. It shall be prioritised above all.

3) The candidate(s) would oblige all instructions, if any, of the curse-alterers and medimagical staff following the Alteration. If failed to do so, the resulting outcome would not be due to fault of the staff, and legal action may be taken if necessary against the responsible party.

4) There was no such medimagical history that would have the candidate(s) particularly high-risk/susceptible to complications.

They were asked several questions, some too personal, _what is the nature of your relationship? Be as honest and straightforward as possible_ . They were told of the possibilities of well-known complications, _it may be that the flow speed of the bond would have to be increased, so there would be the shortened gaps between the curse's dormancy_ , that the bond might act up far more, or become more unpredictable, with much less time for pause in between. 

With magic and curses, there was always the possibility of other unforeseen complications, ones that weren't entirely possible to deduce, and might have never shown up in past cases of similar nature, so this was one more thing that they must be fully prepared for.

They were both quiet when they walked out of the room, Harry letting Malfoy pass through the narrow doorway first, following after him and falling into step with him as they were both led to another room by a mediwitch. 

Harry hadn't thought much about that in these last four days, frankly. His head had been too full of the alteration, too full of the idea of freedom and hope, but now that the moment was so close, it had never felt further away. He had never felt so surreal and aware of everything that could go wrong. So afraid, in particular after reading the clauses of the contract, all the uncertainty that they had to agree to. But he'd thought of all of last year, thought of every year being like this until he was forty, and then it was worth a try. And then anything was worth more than sitting silent and stuck in a life so small and boxed in by this curse.

They had changed into hospital gowns, thin and loose, legs covered under blankets, laid on twin beds. Malfoy was ashen, his mouth small, his brows creased. His eyes darted down at his hands, before he seemed to remember himself and straightened, all haughty composure. Narcissa had been due to return from France just two days before to be at her son's side, but an outbreak of Dragon Pox in her area had the borders closed down, restricting all travel by Portkey.

The room they were in was small, half-crowded with those that Harry loved before the procedure was to start. 

There was Molly, and Hermione sat against his other side, her bushy hair on his shoulder. Bill was standing outside, talking to Xavier and Healer Francine, hands on his hips. Ron was there trying to make him laugh for all the last ten minutes, murmuring just between their group, Hermione throwing a short, hushed quip in with a smile every now and then. Molly whacked Ron on the shoulder with an admonishing word when he said something that was too much.

Harry was still smiling after they were all gone out of the room, leaving him with a kiss on the head, a hug, a hand on his arm or shoulder. His head dropped back gently to his pillow, warm, eased just so with a softer feeling of _it will be okay_ , not necessarily that everything would be okay, but that it would be okay even if it wouldn't be, just because they were all there right outside that door. 

He saw Malfoy only then, now that his line of vision was cleared. He was lying on the bed, arms atop each other over his abdomen, and Harry could only see the tuck of wavy hair behind an ear, a cheekbone. The pale dust of eyelashes. His figure looked strangely small like that, under the falls of the sheets. Harry wanted to say something, voice without words spooling at his tongue, but the medimagical staff started coming in right when he'd opened his mouth. 

A drip of potion was dropped at his lips, the same done to Malfoy beside him, though Harry didn't see it. He only saw the hazy pale blue of the mediwitch's robes, when she crowded in between them. 

The drowsiness began to set in almost a minute later, making him all heavy and liquid into the mattress, like all the soreness and tension in his muscles and joints melted into it. The lights were too bright overhead, falling over the otherwise dim-looking, white room, and his brain was becoming very slow and fuzzy, but in a nice way.

Malfoy's eyes kept slipping shut, all droopy. It made him look softer, and Harry felt very tender and raw in his heart. He was thinking about his aunt saying, _who could ever want a child like you_ , and he was thinking about Ron and Hermione and Molly and Bill, and everybody else that wasn't here but loved him somewhere out there, and how nice it was to be surrounded by the certainty of the people that loved him, and how there was nobody being a certainty for Malfoy outside that door like there were for Harry. 

Harry reached a hand out across the space between their beds, through the rails, pressed slightly over the pads of his half-curled fingers. He liked that Malfoy looked lovely sometimes, like he did in the shroud of day, and in bed, and somehow even now under white bulb lights, with his hair all in messy waves around his ears, a sleepy and confused frown on his face. 

Malfoy's eyes had opened again, heavy-lidded and so very grey. They lowered, in a slow flick, at their hands.

Malfoy's fingers moved slightly, so that Harry's slipped between his, loose and curling a little more. Harry liked the hum between them, piquant and warm and jangling up the nerves of his arm, the way it cocooned around his heart, shivered down his spine.

They fell asleep like that, hands almost holding.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a PTSD-like response and mentions of blood at the end of the chapter

Harry woke up feeling strange, stretched tight at the core. 

The first thing he saw was bushy hair, and a blurry, frowning face over him, Hermione's. She was pushing back the hair at his temple.

"Harry?" Everything sounded too loud, Hermione's whisper, the scuffle of Ron's footsteps as he came into view beside her, closer. He was a blur of red-hair until he placed Harry's glasses onto his face. The lights were much too bright overhead, shadowing at a side of their faces, highlighting the frizz of Hermione's hair.

Harry blinked, until his vision was focusing better. He was still drowsy and weak, and when he asked them how long he'd been out, his voice didn't come out right — it came out too thick, croaky, words running into each other.

Ron casted a Tempus with a flick of his wrist. He was bent over with his palms flat on the sheets, tall even then. "Over fifteen hours. Give or take."

Harry nodded slightly, his eyes drooping back shut. When he pulled them open again, he noticed the expressions on their faces, until they looked away. "Di'n't work?"

Hermione straightened. "You should rest for now. We'll talk about it when you're feeling a bit better, okay?"

But Harry wanted to know everything now, if the procedure worked, if everything went okay and the lifespan of the bonding curse was cut down. Harry _felt_ okay, except for that same old malaise brimming under his skin, that must be tampered down with something else in his system, but he wasn't sure if that meant he _was_ okay, and what about _—_

Harry licked his lips, cracked and dry. "Malfoy?" 

Hermione shared a glance with Ron from the rather low chair. She worked her lower lip, that silent communication thing that they did sometimes. She looked back at him. "He's...not awake yet," she said, a little slowly. "We don't, um… they won't tell us much. They said you're the only one who can know."

Harry frowned, puzzled. He was trying to say something, but his tongue was too heavy, difficult to work with. 

He thought he _had_ said something, but then he was waking up again, trying to sort through his delirious thoughts. A hazy memory of Hermione and Ron's faces came back to him. It was night, and there was nobody there but him now, in what looked like the same white-painted room, just greyed in the dark. 

His eyes slipped shut again, and thoughts morphed into incoherent, blurred images. Waves of messy, white-blond hair. Bright bulb lights. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Harry woke up fully lucid about four days later. Ron and Hermione were there beside him. They were there waiting outside the office, too, when Harry was called in to talk with the cursebreaker.

The alteration did work, was the thing, and now the curse would die out in exactly five years from the day it happened. They would be twenty-four by then, and what Harry was realising was that twenty years was unimaginably long, but five years was still an overwhelmingly long time.

That was the good news.

"Something went wrong, Mr. Potter," was what Xavier bluntly told him in the office, hands steepled together on the desk. "Not with you, but with the other boy."

The flow of the curse had become non-uniform. It remained in the circuit running through him and Malfoy, but now the intensity of it was redirected more towards Malfoy, less towards Harry. 

"Imagine a circle of the magic moving through you and him," Xavier said, trying to simplify it. "But the lines are thicker when they pass through him, narrower through you."

Harry swallowed around his heart, beating fast and wild in his throat. "And what does that mean for him?" he asked. His mind was racing, full of puzzling gaps, full of questions. He felt nauseated, and he wasn't entirely sure if it was just the bond, the effort of trying to stay upright through his illness. "Why isn't he here with us? Why isn't he hearing all this _—_?"

"He doesn't know that it worked," Xavier said, speaking a bit over him. His hollowed cheekbones made his eyes look older, baggier. Faint lines ran across his forehead when his brows went slightly high. "And he cannot know any of this."

There was a reason why they were asked the questions they were asked, and why they were made to sign a contract full of the stipulations it contained _—_ why one of the stipulations was that they were legally mandated to take any and all measures and decisions to ensure the security of their lives, to the best of their abilities.

 _That's highly unethical_ , was what Hermione would say. It was what Harry said to him too, adrenaline spiking up his system, laced with something icy to the point of burning, something sharp and angry and terrified. "You can't just keep this from him! And you can't ask me to do the same thing!" His brows furrowed to a faint ache in his temples, breaths quick and short. His hands were tight around the arms of the chair. "Merlin, isn't this illegal? Doesn't this go against some _—_ some sort of Healer code?"

"Special cases," Xavier answered, simply. "Emotional bonds are extremely tricky things, you see. And when it comes to saving lives, in magic?" He sat back against the chair, fingers curled loose on the desk. "Sometimes, Mr. Potter… it just isn't as simple as being _ethical_."

Malfoy had woken up about a day after Harry had, both of them being kept under observation. _Your body is trying to adjust to all the changes in your magical core,_ Hermione had told him, which Harry hadn't understood the meaning of until now. The increased speed of the curse's flow, Xavier said, compensated for the great amount of loss in Harry's core, so the effects wouldn't be so drastically different for him than before.

For Malfoy, it was a different matter entirely.

With one person bearing much of the weight of the bond's magic, negative emotions were predisposed to hold an effect on Malfoy in a way it hadn't for either of them before. It might be gradual, accumulative, eventually showing with time. It might affect him as it came and went. This was to be determined.

The mechanics of the bond were complicated, and Harry only got just the gist of the explanation, but was left with gaps in his understanding here and there. He only understood that before this, negative emotions were only partially affecting the bond. They weren't the true basis. Positive emotions were, but there wasn't a whole lot of that there, _supposedly,_ Xavier added, which skipped over Harry with no meaning. Hence the curse kept acting up in sporadic breaks of time, resisted the distance between them and encouraged physical contact _—_ not urged, encouraged, as it was only pleasurable upon contact being made _—_ their only source of good feelings, in order to compensate for its lack. 

"Given the nature of your relationship, which your _—_ " Xavier paused in search of a word, waving a hand vaguely. " _partner_ had described as, I quote, _less than civil_ , I believe telling him of the true reality of the outcome would jeopardise, and make artificial, any attempts at creating a good marriage _—_ "

"A good marriage?" 

"A good marriage," Xavier repeated, after a long second, seeming mildly inconvenienced by being cut off in such a way. "That is what the curse wants, after all."

"I can't _—_ this is _—_ " Harry said, breathed hard, looking down at his hand, at his nails touching the wood of the desk. Surely it didn't have to mean _—_ "I can't make myself feel something I don't feel."

" _You_ need not feel anything for yourself, Mr. Potter. You only need to make _him_ feel it." He paused, tapping his fingers. "Ideally, it should be… something steady and constant, you see. Something fulfilling. _Love_ ," He said the word with a dim sort of disdain. "is what I mean, but that would be difficult to pull off, given your dislike for each other, so civility should do as well. Now it wouldn't be entirely…comfortable for him, even then, but I'm certain elimination of much of the ill-feelings should be enough."

"Could this… could this be a threat to his life?" Harry asked, staring wide and fixated down at the desk. "If it went wrong?"

There was silence, and then, "Excessive magic operating in a single body can be lethal, Mr. Potter. Yes." Xavier shrugged. It was strange, infuriating, that he seemed so desensitized to it all, like something he'd already seen countless times, but to Harry, it all crumbled upon him with the weight of a mountain. "So it would be favourable to keep it stabilised as much as possible."

"And what if… what if something does go wrong?"

"A legal investigation," Xavier said, the tone of his voice sounding like _perhaps._ He shrugged again. Harry wanted to break something. "Only to make sure there were no ill-intentions involved, of course."

  
  


* * *

  
  


The potion that dampened the curse was wearing off.

Malfoy was standing by the bed when Harry opened the door. He'd been mid-way through buttoning up his shirt, his hair a shadowed frizz of stray locks against the light high behind him. Harry leaned a heavy shoulder against the doorframe and watched him, half-numbed and in a muddle of confused feelings, like all his insides had been pushed around, left all wrong. 

Malfoy finally noticed him in the doorway, hands slowing. For a moment, there was nothing but for them to look at each other in the wide distance between them.

Harry slid off the doorframe, then, moving towards him, and then he was in Malfoy's space, crowding him in against the wall with a hand beside his head. Malfoy's shoulders fell back, face close against his, hair riding up from the back. His gaze was locked on his own. 

It was only then that he noticed the stiffness of Malfoy's body, the slight heave in his chest when it rose and fell. Harry's gaze flicked up to his eyes, scarlet against a pale, tired face. His hands did not feel like his own, when they brushed over the sides of his untucked shirt, curled against it.

Malfoy's face changed at the first touch of Harry's hand on his skin, worn and creased between the brows to something desperate and overwhelmed, his eyes confused and wild. He gasped, slack-jawed, squirmed against his hand, as if too sensitive, hands gripping Harry's arms tight. Harry's hands followed Malfoy's body, whispering soothingly to him, _it's okay, it's okay,_ as Malfoy tried to push him off with a strangled noise for a second, two. Then, he calmed, stopped pushing him. His face was easing in a slow moment, still full of that confusion underneath desperate and overwhelming need, as his hands pulled him closer instead.

"Yes?" Harry mumbled, after a moment of letting him settle down.

Malfoy hummed, affirmative. He was grabbing at his back, fingers tight near the caved-in line of Harry's spine, stumbled him closer. 

"It didn't work," Malfoy rasped, thick. His breaths shuddered through his nose, a hand on the nape of Harry's neck.

For a moment, Harry had to gather himself, just to give him a tired hum. It barely reached through the expanse of this white bright room, only breathed between them. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Ron and Hermione would stay the night at his house. There wasn't much conversation at the table, and Harry mostly spent it staring down at his plate, pushing his boiled vegetables around. Malfoy had skipped dinner. He'd gone straight upstairs with his bag, a heavy hand on the railing.

"Five years," Harry mumbled at their nightcap. His head was over the back of the couch, his drink between his lap. "How am I supposed to…"

Hermione was sitting with half of her back against Ron's chest, their hands tangled on his thigh. Ron's knee was touching his, a wordless comfort. His mouth squinched up at a corner, cleared his throat and looked away, like he didn't know what to say about it. None of them knew, it seemed. Harry knew this was all they had. Cutting down to five years was the most he could get, and it still felt like forever, more real and fathomable in a way that twenty years hadn't been. 

And it all went wrong in ways Harry couldn't have even thought of.

"I think I..." Harry said, staring up at the ceiling, unspeakably exhausted in a way that felt deeper than his body. "I think I pressured him."

There was no answer. They knew something had gone wrong with the alteration, and with Malfoy, but they didn't know what exactly. Narcissa, like Malfoy, wouldn't be told anything either, as she was too close to Malfoy. This would be putting him at risk.

Hermione was frowning, bemused. Ron was worrying on his upper lip.

"What?" Harry asked.

Hermione shook her head slowly. "Nothing, Harry. Just… It doesn't sound like Malfoy, does it? To do anything just because _you_ would pressurise him?"

Harry thought about it, and she was right. It didn't sound like Malfoy at all. If there was one thing Harry learned about living with him, it was that he was stubborn about getting his way in everything. He'd only begun to cave after Harry had raved about suffering this life with each other, not ever getting to be with someone they truly loved.

"I suppose he didn't want to be with me just as much as I didn't want to be with him," Harry said.

Before Harry headed upstairs, he bent down from behind the couch and gave Hermione a goodnight kiss on the cheek, Ron a pat on the shoulder as he passed him by. He heard the faint murmurs start up from the drawing room as he was trudging half-way up the steps, but couldn't muster enough energy to care about it much.

He turned the doorknob, walked into the bedroom. He paused in the doorway upon seeing the silhouette under the blankets, the flash of bright hair in the dark. The pillow was back in the middle of the bed again.

Harry closed the door behind him, turning away. He pulled his jumper up over his head as he made his way over to the wardrobe, threw it aside and changed into a plain shirt. He was painfully aware of the man behind him, in his bed, as he sat down at the edge of the bed and pushed his trousers off, left in his boxers. 

He hunched over low, a knuckle clasped into his hand, trying to ease the vice around his lungs. He looked over his shoulder, after a long moment, finally letting himself. There was the tangle of legs under the sheets. A wrist twisted under a cheek. 

Muddled up emotions and despair, that had laid dormant in his chest, began to swell up into the forefront, overwhelming, running through him. He thought of five years, the burden of a life on his shoulders, dependent on the choices he made _—_ like war all over again. His life had become so small, with this curse boxing him in, and the ring stuck to his finger, weightless with habit until he caught sight of it, remembered what it meant. Then it was like a noose around his neck.

Harry swallowed, his heart a dull, weary race. He brought his fingers almost to his brow, pushed it up half in his mop of curls instead, the other half at his hairline. A close-mouthed breath shuddered through his nose, trembling through his shoulders.

It was a long while later that he finally straightened, with a sharp inhale, running both hands down his face. He stood up quickly, moving to his side of the bed on his feet so as to not jostle the mattress and wake Malfoy. He climbed up and shifted under his own covers.

Malfoy's face was right there in front of him, half-hidden behind the pillow, asleep. Harry closed his eyes, trying to sleep too.

  
  


* * *

They had to make a few more trips to St. Mungos, going through further diagnostics and tests to see if anything else showed up. 

They had sex whenever they felt able, though it was more a chore these days than anything. Some days neither of them, or one of them, just didn't want to, so they didn't. So they just dealt with it every six to eight hours, irritated and tired and sick of it and each other.

For the first few days, there was no fighting, even if only because, in their lingering exhaustion and recuperating, they weren't talking beyond necessary. Still, Harry was waiting for the outburst.

It came when they'd been having dinner, with only the sound of clinks of fork and spoons against the plate. Malfoy asked, casual and soft, "Was it worth it, Potter?"

Harry lifted his head. He didn't understand it, the first second, but he did right when he'd found himself asking, "What?"

He heard the answer in his head before Malfoy even said it. "The alteration, of course." Malfoy looked up at him, all hollow silver, mouth thinned. He'd put his spoon and fork down, another clink. "Was it worth it?"

Harry stared at him, could feel the _tick-tick-tick_ of the timebomb that was their bond now. _I don't know_ , he thought. _Merlin, I don't know._

"It was worth a try," was what Harry said, looking back down at his plate, putting up an insouciant facade as he collected a bite on his spoon.

When he looked up with a raise of his brows, mid-chewing, Malfoy was unmoving. His nostrils flared. He had that thin smile at his mouth again, more of a sneer than anything. He sat back, a little sideways. "Well. I'm sure it's all very easy, Potter, when you don't have anything better to do than sit around in a bookshop."

Harry eyed him, brows furrowed. Malfoy's fingers were curled on top of the table, tucked tight into his palm. His anger was simmering under the surface, hardening his cheeks, heaving slow in his chest.

"Something you want to say, Malfoy?"

"I told you, didn't I," Malfoy said, abrupt, teeth grinded. "I told you it could go wrong, but you just _had_ to go through with it _—_ "

"Yeah, well, I wasn't the only one that chose to _go through with it_ _—_ " Harry cut in, defensively over him.

Malfoy leaned forward, teeth bared in an angered rictus. "What difference did it make? We're still stuck together for twenty fucking years, only now instead of having four days _—_ " His voice was beginning to rise as well. a near-shout, a raw and rough edge to it. "we can't have a full day to ourselves without having to _fuck each other_ _— !_ " 

"And what else were we supposed to do then?" Harry asked, trying to sound controlled, to keep his voice low and calm. "I wasn't going to just sit there knowing I'd be stuck to you for decades and do nothing about it! Would you rather we'd have taken no chances at all to better our circumstances, then? Just twiddle our thumbs waiting for something that would never come up? This was _all_ we had!"

"And look how it turned out!"

"I didn't _know_ it was going to turn out like this!" Harry yelled, his own anger flaring even wilder, something else under that _—_ a desperate sort of fear. He breathed, tried to calm down, lowered his voice, "And can we please stop acting like I was the only one that didn't want this damned _—_ "

"I _can't focus anymore!_ I have my examinations coming up in _four_ months, and I _can't fucking_ focus or live my fucking life in peace because of this stupid curse now constantly _—_ " He broke off, panting heavily, his face now doleful and distressed.

Harry didn't say anything. 

Malfoy was saying that as if he expected Harry to know exactly what he was talking about, as if Harry was feeling the unease of it all the time. Xavier had explained that the faster flow of the magic between them had very similar sensations to an increased amount of magic, which was why it wasn't all too different for Harry than before. He just felt it a lot less than Malfoy did.

"Right. Well," Harry said, weakened by the sudden and sharp awareness of his own secrets, quiet. He stood up to his feet. "I'm going to bed."

  
  


* * *  
  


It was confusing, overwhelming, exhausting. All of it. Trying to meet the curse's demands, each other's needs due to it. Trying to live a life, see the people he loved, especially on the days that one or both of them just didn't want to bother trying with sex, even to afford themselves time.

His only breath of air, the grip over the clamber for his own sanity, were Ron and Hermione, often coming over for dinner, imitating normalcy and making him smile and forget a little bit with mundane stories of their time in training, complaining about living with each other with the riveted fondness and amusement of enjoying one another too much anyway, updating him on what they'd heard about their other friends that Harry had yet to catch up to.

Hermione would come some weekends with entire tombs of books, searching for something and forcing Ron and Harry to read along with her, but by now, it was clear that there just wasn't much information about these things. She was always encouraging honesty and communication between the two of them, the only other thing there was to cope with their predicament.

But Harry couldn't bring himself to talk to Malfoy. He wasn't sure why, beyond that the idea of having a civil, healthy discussion about trying to build a better 'relationship' and, moreover, that it would go down well with Malfoy just seemed _bizarre_. 

Somehow Harry was aware and forgetting, all at the same time, of what had happened, of the truth of their bond now, and how dangerous it could be. Perhaps because it wasn't so clear to the eye. Perhaps because Harry was still reeling, trying to pull away from how everything felt like a numbed dream, trying to connect back to reality.

Instead they had several more fights after, mostly regarding the alteration, one uglier than the other. One of them had Malfoy sardonically quipping how Harry must have really enjoyed nearly dying through school to have taken such a grand risk now. Another had ended in Harry shouting, " _Because it's you, Malfoy!_ It's you that I have to spend two decades being cursed with, and frankly, yes, I _would_ much rather die!"

Malfoy had gone silent for a moment. His gaze flickered with something, an almost stunned sort of pinch, and then quick to evaporate with a blink, his face cementing. Then, slowly pressing the pads of his fingers against the tabletop, he leaned forward to meet Harry's eyes coldly, "The feeling is _very_ mutual, Potter." His voice was almost a whisper, how dangerously low it was.

His hand raised from the table, nostrils flared. He turned and set at a clipped pace towards the door.

"I'm getting really fucking sick and tired of you, you know that!" Harry shouted after him, infuriated and petty, wanting the last word.

Malfoy threw an arm in an angry sort gesture at him as he walked away, the back of his pressed white shirt to him, bellowing back, "And I say, the feeling is mutual!"

Another one happened in the middle of an impromptu ball party full of Narcissa's family friends, Harry forced to tag along as a precaution. He spent most of his time there drinking, bored out of his mind and letting Malfoy do all the talking. Apparently he was quite good at it when it wasn't with Harry.

The first time anybody referred to their 'marriage' was a teasing by an elegant, middle-aged woman when she saw how close they were standing next to each other. The second was an old, bizarrely dressed lady that made everything her own business, it seemed. She noticed how aloof Harry was, and was going on about how _isn't it so sad when beautiful couples fall out_ and _my husband always used to say a kiss is better than a fight_ as if that made any sense at all. 

Malfoy clearly found Harry's lacklustre reaction comical, smirking at him. It was after she left that he leaned in close to his ear, made a mockery of it, _a kiss is better than a fight, isn't that right, darling dear?_

The annoyance had collected into anger by then, the alcohol in his system making him loose and a little more out of control than he already felt when sober. Harry did not know what came over him, only felt like they were making light of an awful thing, even though a corner of logic acknowledged that they didn't really know what had happened.

But Malfoy knew, didn't he? Even if the rest of them didn't.

"Don't call me that, for fuck's sake," Harry snapped, loudly, and the people immediately around them silenced. Malfoy's face fell, draining of colour as he threw a quick glance around. Harry didn't care much, consumed by the anger burning like acid in his throat. 

Malfoy blinked. His jaw muscle locked, for a split second. "Potter, this isn't the place for a damned quarrel _—_ " he said, in a low, warning tone. 

"I'd never have married somebody like you if I could help it," Harry said, staring him dead in the eye. "And I want everybody to know that."

He did get his wish, it turned out, because the next day it was on _the Prophet_ , which he only found out about when Malfoy threw it under his face, hard.

_Death-Eater Draco Malfoy Forced Harry Potter into Marriage: Confirmed_

Harry looked up from the paper on the table, at him, blinking. His mouth opened, worked around words he didn't have.

"You humiliated me," Malfoy said, low, a curl of his mouth that Harry wasn't sure was a snarl or distress or both.

"It's not my fault that some idiot misconstrued what I was saying," Harry mumbled instead, looking away. It sounded weak, even as stubborn pride kept him from apologising. 

"Do you even understand what you just did?" Malfoy hissed, fists clenched. "I can't go outside anymore. They'll want to kill me! My _mother—_ " That was where his face almost contorted. He clenched his jaw harder, eyes red-rimmed and wide with something that was as much terror as it was anger.

"I didn't know this would happen," Harry said, after a few seconds, not knowing what else to say.

"Fix it. _Now_ . I want you to make a damned statement, on _Veritaserum_ , that I did not force you into this."

Hours later, he found Malfoy kneeling at the fireplace, his mother's face green in the fire as he said, urgent and frantic, _just don't go outside anywhere until this gets sorted out, okay? And make sure to keep up all the wards and protection spells, I'll be over there soon—_

That evening, Harry called Xenophilius, and told the world the truth on Veritaserum.

Outside of the heat of a fight, when clarity shone through the cloud, he could see himself playing a dangerous game with Malfoy's life, and the guilt would sink down and deep on him. He would tell himself he'd be better the next time, that he wouldn't get into it with Malfoy again.

Only, when Harry was around Malfoy, it was difficult. He was angry as it was, without clear reason beyond how his life had turned out after everything that had already happened to him, his brain stretched taut, like bubbling acid in his throat. Harry tried his best to keep it down, for the most part, but for a snapped word here, a short, clipped response there, no different from Malfoy's own constantly slipping temperament.

Harry wasn't able to steer clear of Malfoy for all too long, but he tried anyway as much as he could, avoiding rooms he was in, going off somewhere outside as much and as long as he thought he could afford. 

On the days he _could_ afford it, he stayed out a lot longer, wishing he could be free enough to stay out forever. He was tired of his house, seeing those walls, trying to stay close to another person _—_ to Malfoy, who he was incapable of having a civil conversation with, it seemed. He was afraid of them fighting again over the alteration, or something stupid, feeling like he fucked up and made things worse by falling into it.

One way or another, though, he eventually had to come back.

Harry, perhaps, did not do well enough to show Malfoy he was just as affected. He noticed it these days _—_ Malfoy's calculating stare or studious frown on him whenever they were doing the necessitated contact, flicking away whenever Harry caught him. Harry stopped looking back at him, afraid of what Malfoy might see, afraid he'd somehow read all of the truth there. Malfoy was often the one who'd come to Harry first, because it always came on faster for him now than it did for Harry.

"I want to have us looked over by a healer," Malfoy said one day, having come to Harry while he was reading in bed. 

How much of a help could they be, seeing as they'd needed curse breakers' aid to determine anything?

"I hardly think Healers would know anything," he said. "A curse-breaker seems more like the kind of person that could help."

"Fine, then your were-Weasley should do."

Harry clenched his jaw. He lifted his head and stared Malfoy flatly in the eyes. "Bill. His name's Bill." Malfoy only shrugged, uncaring. "Do I need to remind you of how he became one in the first place?"

There was a pause, a flash of something in his eyes that evaporated almost just as it came, and then Malfoy was left with only an unfathomable look on his face, teeth at the inner edge of his lip slightly, and then a twist, a sort of curl, at one corner of his mouth, turning his head away. "No," he said, low.

Harry went back to reading.

"Well?" Malfoy pressed. In his peripheral vision, he could see the cross of his arms over the chest of his white buttoned shirt. The cuff of his sleeves was squared at the middle of his arms.

"Why do you have to drag me along anyway?" Harry muttered, still bitter and annoyed. 

"Because it takes two for a damned bond to work, so will you come or not?"

Harry frowned, looking at him again, and then frowned deeper. Malfoy was leaning against the doorway. His face seemed pale under the low light, but Harry couldn't entirely tell if it wasn't just the light. Malfoy had that kind of face, all sharp facial lines and delicate features.

He seemed particularly adamant, insistent. Malfoy's jaw was set. There was something in his gaze, a few shades off of some brimming emotion. On Harry's persistent silence, Malfoy closed his eyes, as if trying to summon patience and composure, and said, dangerously low, "Potter, for Salazar's _—_ "

"Why do you want to see a Healer so badly anyway?" Harry asked, trying to pry his thoughts from him.

"Because we're patients of complications by a botched alteration. I want them to take a closer look and see what else went wrong."

Harry remembered the legislation passed on Malfoy hours later _—_ the right reserved to refuse services to anyone who was or was associated with Death-Eaters _—_ and at the realisation as to why exactly Malfoy had wanted him to come along. "Oh." 

He got into contact with Healer Francine days later, made an appointment. He couldn't hear much of what she said where Malfoy was sat on the hospital bed, beyond _the_ _more...intimacy… the better—_ beyond _magical theory is just that, theory, so there's not much known_ —beyond _it seems negative emotions may be having more of an involvement—_

"Do you understand?" was what Healer Francine said at the end, sounded pointed as she did, like there was a private, hidden meaning under the surface that only she and Malfoy knew.

There was a pause, a long one, before, "Yes, I _..._ I understand."

"So you must either communicate, or do the work within yourself somehow, I'm afraid."

"Yes." Malfoy sounded odd, haunted. Distant. He cleared his throat. "Thank you."

  
  


* * *

  
  


And then one day, it caught up.

And then one day, there was a loud crash from the kitchen, shattering ceramic, an almost buried cry amidst them.

Harry was frozen for a full ten seconds, confused. Then the adrenaline shot through him, tore him off his painting stool and across the drawing room and down the corridor. 

A grip on the doorframe pulled him to a halt outside the kitchen.

There was a shattered plate on the floor. Malfoy was slumped against the cabinets with his legs sprawled out unevenly, shivering. He was breathing shallow and ragged, his chest moving fast and high. Blood was smudged under his nose, on the knuckles of his hand. 

"Fuck," Harry whispered, and then found himself running again, skidding at Malfoy's feet and shaking his shoulders. "Merlin, Malfoy? Malfoy!" He patted his cheek, trying to keep him awake, but Malfoy's head only lolled against the cabinet, gaze unfocused. Harry's heart was in his throat, wild and racing. He blinked hard at the floor, unable to think, not knowing what to do.

Harry gripped Malfoy's biceps, hitching him closer, off the cabinets. He was so cold. He grabbed his back, hooked the other arm under the sprawl of his legs, hoisting him up against him and in his arms.

He made his way to the drawing room and settled him down on the couch, kneeled down on the floor beside him and rucked up the tuck of Malfoy's shirt into his waistband and got his hands, still trembling, on his skin, the slight curve of his waist. It was the only thing he could think of doing.

Harry stared at Malfoy's face, his blue lips, his half-mast eyes. How sickly he looked. He looked away when he couldn't look at him any longer. The fear pulsed through him, left his throat dry and closed. What if it wasn't enough? He still didn't entirely understand how this bond worked, how complicated it was made by its basis being cemented in things as complex as emotions of all things. And what if this was all out of Harry's hands now? What if it was his fault that Malfoy _—_

What if Malfoy _—_

He was caught between staying, doing the one thing that could be keeping Malfoy's life in him, and seeking help from someone, anyone, that would know better than Harry.

About five minutes later, on seeing no visible improvement, frantic and shaky still over every passing minute of a possibly wrong decision, and the thought of Malfoy's life leaving him with it, Harry began to stand up, pulling Malfoy's shirt down gently, running a hand over him to smooth it out.

A pull on his wrist, clammy and light, brought him back, turning to look at Malfoy.

At first Harry didn't quite understand what he'd said. He'd thought it was an incoherent word, as one might in delirium, but it seemed like a sign of improvement and Harry, latching on, quickly kneeled back down, leaned close, hands mindlessly coming around Malfoy's knee, the edge of a cushion. "Malfoy?" he whispered.

Malfoy's eyes were on Harry's face, but he seemed just a bit more aware than some moments ago, and when his lips moved around a murmur, it formed into a shallow, ragged blur of breaths, "you need _—_ to touch me."

Harry blinked, fast, his throat dry. He nodded, working to get his hands under his shirt again. 

Malfoy's lips pressed together slightly for a second, his feeble breaths pushing out through the very small part of them. He shook his head, a minute gesture. 

It took Harry a blank moment to understand.

"Are you sure?" Harry asked, slowly, throat convulsing. His fingers were still there, resting against the flat, soft belly.

Malfoy's mouth tightened slightly, a small puff of air through his nose. His eyes were fixated up at the ceiling. It made Harry feel stupid.

After a quick charm wiped Malfoy and his hand, he pulled Malfoy's pants and trousers up, watched him closely for changes, but he was still shivering, just the same. Malfoy's brows twitched, and he looked confused, shifting on his back a little. He made a rough and strangled sound.

"It's not working." Malfoy's voice sounded, still, like a breath, a whisper, but now strained and frantic. "It used to work, why isn't it working anymore _—_ "

He didn't know. He didn't know and he couldn't understand anything and somewhere under it all, he was fifteen and watching his godfather fall into a veil. He was seventeen and standing in a room full of corpses, a whisper inside his head as loud as the wails of grief echoing back, saying, _my fault my fault my fault I should have done better I should have known better I—_

With his mind a warzone, fear and pain hot and pulling his chest taut, Harry clambered up on the couch, whispering, "I don't know, Merlin, I don't know, I _—_ " He wedged himself into the space between Malfoy and the back of the couch, blinking hard and fast, a sound bubbling at the base of his throat, a sob choked down. 

His vision blurred, hands thick and uncooperative as he pushed an arm under Malfoy's waist, under his shirt rucking up, curled it around his lower back, hitching him in against him. He tucked Malfoy's head over his own shoulder.

He could hardly think straight enough to produce a Patronus. It was about fifteen minutes of seeing no improvement in Malfoy and unsuccessful, increasingly desperate attempts that Harry forced himself to stop, take some time to breathe and clear his mind.

It took another fifteen minutes to conjure a stag, translucent white and lissome, shooting up from his palm, pressed up against Malfoy's spine. It flew through the wall, rushing towards St. Mungos, and then the Department of Mysteries.

Harry realised only then that there was warmth in Malfoy's body, having seeped back somewhere in the middle of all that. When he could finally bring himself to look at him, heart pulsing wildly between his collarbones _—_

Malfoy's face had regained colour again, a splotch of pink high in his cheeks. He'd fallen asleep against Harry, was breathing steady and soft near the tensed muscle of Harry's neck, craning to see him. Harry touched his chest, feeling the rise and fall of it against his trembling fingers, the beating of his heart. He let his head fall back with a slow, shuddering exhale, deflating his shoulders, his eyes closing. He swallowed. The waves of relief chased away the leftover fear, leaving him exhausted, his confusion a distant thing in the face of it all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter deals with panic attacks, depressive responses and dissociation as a part of PTSD (and some mentions of Harry's abusive past with the Dursleys) but by no means is the portrayal meant to encompass the true complexity of it!

Hermione had stayed with him by the fireplace for an hour — the most she could get — while Malfoy slept on the couch. Harry could see Malfoy's back, a tuft of white-blond hair, the blankets up to his shoulders. Healer Francine was beside him, casting spells. He and Hermione talked in hushed voices, her face lined with desperate worry.

"What  _ happened? _ "

"I," Harry said, his face buried in his hands, still shaky all over. "I found him like that. He was… we've been fighting a lot, and I…" He couldn't speak, and Hermione took his hand and squeezed it tight, letting him compose himself a bit more first before he explained everything that had happened before she came.

After, Healer Francine had come to him and told him the dark magic had gotten too unstable in him, asked him if there had been too much tension between them, any anxiety-inducing situations, were they fighting a lot, and on Harry's answering silence, she emphasised that there must not be further stress on Draco's core, that they needed to take care and try to be better to each other.

Harry had noticed Malfoy's failing health in vague snatches, in his avoidance of being in the same room as him or looking at him more than necessary. He hadn't thought much of it then, but it came back now in full, blasting force — the slow gait. A stumble, catching himself on a counter, and the way Malfoy's brows would be creased at breakfast, squinting, like he'd been trying to focus through a haze. The way he'd grown quieter over these past several days, ended any arguments they'd had faster, turning his back and waving a hand sharply over his shoulder as if to say,  _ whatever _ , in the end.

It took Malfoy a whole day to recover again, and long periods of necessitated contacts. The next day, Harry found him in the kitchen, and he took a good look at him for a minute whilst he was still unseen in the doorway. His head was bowed slightly as he read the papers atop the cross of his ankle over knee, eyes moving through the lines, a mug held slightly high in hand. He seemed considerably better, and it was almost surreal to remember what had happened that day.

The fact of the matter was also that Harry just did not know how to go about this, whatever he was meant to be doing. 

One morning, he made himself tea, and in some tentative attempt, made a cup for Malfoy too, cream and five spoons of sugar as he'd always taken since school, as a sign of  _ —  _ something. He put it down in front of Malfoy, standing over his shoulder, and only saw a split-second of his surprised expression, the raise of his head, before Harry was making his way back over to the counter, starting for his own breakfast.

On another day, Harry greeted him with a  _ morning _ , and Malfoy, faltering for a second, said it back, even if slow and bemused. He asked him what he was studying, and Malfoy asked him why he cared. 

"I'm just… asking," Harry said, lamely, glancing down at his cup, his hand. He threw in a shrug, then, for good measure.

"Why are you asking?" Malfoy asked, hands folded, leaned back on his chair. 

They'd never talked about it, that day in the kitchen, and the living room. They didn't talk about a lot of things, Harry supposed, but he wondered what he thought of Harry's attempts to reconcile, to build civility ever since then. Did he question why? Did he find it strange and absurd? Should Harry have thought more about how he'd timed this? What was Malfoy thinking about all that was happening to him, not happening to Harry?

Malfoy had to have noticed by now how partial the bond had become. He was far too intelligent not to, but due to the overall complexity and lack of proper answers, he might not be able to pinpoint the cause all too easily.

"I think if, um… if there's a possibility, you know, of this being all there is now? You and me for years?" Harry shrugged, tapped a nail on the table. "I'd just rather we at least try to make the best of it."

Malfoy's expression had worn off. He was eying him, head cocked, unfathomable. 

"There's already too much to deal with, and I don't want to deal with _—_ with our problems with each other on top of that, because honestly, I already feel like I'm going mad with all this as it is."

Malfoy didn't say anything to that. Harry glanced down at his plate, pushed at his sausage with the tip of his fork, wishing he knew what was going through Malfoy's head. 

They didn't see much of each other for the rest of the day, until Malfoy had to leave dinner with his mother and come to Harry. They didn't talk much then either.

The next day, Malfoy acknowledged him with a lift of his head when he walked in, greeting him with a  _ morning _ . He flicked his wrist, clearing up half the table of his things for him. Harry blinked, surprised, as he sat down on the chair across from him. 

Malfoy threw the papers over to him, pulled the mug close to his lips, hiding a smirk.  _ Harry Potter wins Most Charming Smile for the second time.  _ Harry huffed at that.

On another day, Malfoy asked him what he was painting, stood there in front of the fireplace as he pulled a scarf around his neck, tucking the end into the front of his buttoned coat in a certain fashion. He wore it heavy around his neck, thick layers that rose high above his slim, flat chest and almost covered his chin.

"A lot of things," Harry told him, absently. He painted whatever he felt like painting  _ — _ a sunset, a waterfall. His parents. "I capture beauty. I paint people that I love."

People were beautiful, was what Harry learned through making art, and it didn't always have to do with the shape of their faces, the lines of their bodies, their eyes and nose and mouth. They were beautiful for the way they looked in a certain moment, and by what they expressed in it, like the way Hermione looked at Ron when he wasn't looking back at her, like the furrow in her brow when was deeply engrossed into what she was reading. It was the way their laughter lit their faces up, like Ron going flushed when he laughed so hard his eyes watered, and Ginny with the way she threw her head back and clapped and laughed with her whole body. It was the way they were when hardly aware of anything or anybody around them, like Molly humming to herself while she was crocheting. Like Luna dancing at parties in her own world, eyes closed and face blissful with a smile.

Malfoy didn't really say much to that, just hummed in a way that suggested he wasn't all too impressed.

"What?"

"Hm? No. Nothing. I was just expecting something more interesting, I suppose."

"Like what?" Malfoy only shrugged to that. With a  _ see you later, Potter,  _ he grabbed his bag of floo powder atop the fireplace, next to Harry's, and disappeared in a roar.

On another day, Malfoy made dinner for the two of them, and Harry complimented his cooking. Malfoy didn't respond to that much, head bowed over his plate, an elbow on the table. The fork clinked against the plate as he collected a bite. He was a little flushed from the wine he was having with it. 

On another day, Harry asked him what he liked for breakfast and learned that Malfoy liked smoked salmon and poached eggs. So he made that for him.

On another day, Harry was musing to Ginny on firecall, "it still would have been difficult, but I guess more...possible, you know. If it were someone… because this bond… it wants something good, like  _ —  _ love. And joy. And it's one thing to be bonded in this way to anyone at all, but it's another thing to be bonded to someone that I will never feel anything for. You know what I mean?"

After exchanging  _ byes _ , Harry ended the call with a fond smile and got to his feet and turned around. Malfoy was there, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe. He had an armful of groceries, a bottle of champagne.

"Oh. Hi," Harry said.

Malfoy straightened, almost seemed a little startled by him speaking. "Potter," he said, nodding at him. He walked over to the counter, in that stiff and pointed way again, like he was too aware of himself and everything around him. He put the bag of groceries down, saying, "Well, I believe I have done my share of the domestic duties for the day. Restocking the pantry should be yours." He darted a glance at Harry, a quick satirical smile flickering at his lips as he did, and then looked back down, fingers on the marble counter. He tapped them a few times, and then grabbed the bottle by its neck, turning towards the door, striding towards it in short, clipped steps. "Well, I'll be off to bed after a few drinks."

Harry frowned. "You're not having dinner?"

Malfoy paused in his steps, and took a second too long before he spoke. "No, I…" he said. His head moved fractionally over his shoulder, as if he almost meant to look at Harry but stopped half-way through. He seemed off, somehow, but Harry wasn't sure in what way exactly. "I already had dinner."

Harry didn't have anything to say, and he left.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Malfoy was too quiet and strange again, like when they'd returned from the hospital, a little like those days before he'd collapsed. The last time it had grown gradually over a longer span of time, but none of that seemed comforting. Harry kept asking him if he was alright, asked him one too many times, maybe, until Malfoy snapped at him to stop.

Civility, Xavier had said, should be enough, only it seemed to Harry that what he was doing wasn't enough. He wasn't sure if it could ever be, with Malfoy, and he felt like he was standing in front of a tide bearing down on him, trying to shove back at the inevitable, all that was out of his control  _ — _ the thing that would bear down on him anyway, no matter how hard he fought. 

Harry stopped sleeping.

Some nights, he would, but he'd always wake up with fear tight in his throat, his heart wild and racing in his throat. Sometimes he'd remember fragmented images of his nightmares. Empty eyes staring up into a gray, overcast sky. A body falling into a veil. Standing in the middle of a dark forest, completely alone until a flash of green light came his way. Sometimes in the middle of a dark cupboard, completely alone until footsteps pounded down the stairs above him, wrenched the door open just as he woke up.

Sometimes there was nothing at all. They just seemed black, and he would shoot up sitting without any clear reason for the blind terror choking his throat, as heavy as a boulder and keeping his breaths trapped under it.

Harry was no stranger to nightmares. Some nights, even before, he'd woken up with his heart beating wildly in his throat. Some nights, fewer, he'd woken up sweaty and gasping in the dark and found Malfoy standing against the wall, silently waiting it out, before coming back to bed. He never said anything about them.

These days, he would be doing something mundane, like washing the dishes, or cooking, or doing the laundry, and suddenly a memory would push itself into the middle of his thoughts, persistent until he gave into it. Sometimes it would have nothing to do with the war, or Sirius. Sometimes it would just be the Dursleys, like when he was eight and he'd gotten distracted by Dudley's computer and forgotten that his Aunt had told him to clean out the garden before they got back from the zoo, and how loudly they'd yelled, how they'd closed the cupboard door on his fingers in their angry rush to lock him in.

He would push back at these memories, these blurry and fragmented images, like his mind had blocked out much of the details, and it wouldn't feel much like anything at first. It would always catch up to his body before the panic would set in. He would only notice how bad it had gotten until his chest was so heavy he couldn't breathe, and his hands would grow numb and start shaking, and he would begin to feel the way he had standing in front of Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest, like every other instance he'd been seconds away from facing his death or somebody else's again, his heart battering so hard it felt like it would be the thing to kill him first.

He passed out drinking on the couch one night, and woke up in his bed with his head pounding, his mouth stuffy and dry, nausea rolling around in his stomach. 

Still, he was warm under his covers, more comfortable without his shoes and belt, his glasses taken off his face and placed onto the nightstand. A faint memory came to him, a moment after, of his glasses carefully being pulled off his face, the handles being folded back by a press to Harry's chest, somebody over him saying, hushed, "go back to sleep."

Some nights, he laid there in the night, staring at the ceiling, mind whirling with all that had gone wrong in the past again, with what could go wrong in the future. He tossed and turned, thought himself into panic attacks until he had to rustle out of his heavy, suffocating sheets and into the bathroom. He had thought Malfoy was used to his restlessness by now, was able to sleep through it, but he turned over one night and caught him watching Harry in the dark, the white of his eyes turned grey, the shade of his skin and his bright hair standing out in the dim-lit room. 

So he started leaving his bed sooner, stumbling into his bathroom as soon as he felt his hands begin to numb and his chest tighten.

He was heavy-hearted and fatigued nearly all the time now, withdrawn and quiet, and the house was quiet these days too. Sometimes Harry thought he felt Malfoy's gaze on him, in his peripheral vision, but whenever he lifted his head, Malfoy would be looking elsewhere. At his own hand. At the plate. A parchment in front of him. 

But the quiet lasted only for about a week.

All his progress with Malfoy  _ — _ whatever tentative civility they'd formed  _ —  _ seemed to have dissipated in the instant of a morning. Now, instead of what had been the anger of being forced to live together in such close quarters and into each other's space all the time, it felt much more deliberate, as if he was really trying to pick a fight with him. Malfoy would turn his wireless up higher on his hangover mornings, or one of those stupid channels he liked to laugh at, take so long in the bathroom that somedays Harry would floo over to Ron and Hermione's instead.

He was doing a lot of those things that bothered Harry, except now he did so doubly, with obvious intent to rile him up, not simply out of mere indifference to it. He would make underhanded comments, mocking Harry about his clothing choices, his hair. His boring job. He didn't understand what Malfoy wanted from these interactions, from trying to irritate him in his tired misery.

Harry was too exhausted, too much like he was floating outside of himself and watching his life through another pair of eyes, to feel much about anything these days. His silence, his lack of response or reaction to most of it, only seemed to push Malfoy even more, sometimes almost to the point of seeming frustrated and upset.

On another day, Malfoy was standing in the doorway, leaning against the doorpost with his arms crossed over his chest. He'd been doing it again, trying to provoke him in some way for the last few minutes, finally coming to a remark about what an excellent conversational partner he was being. His tone was full of a mock-intrigue of sorts, all drawling sarcasm, "no, truly, your eloquence never ceases to amaze me, Potter, what a  _ riveting  _ conversation this is! Salazar, I couldn't have married a more exciting man _ — _ "

Harry was nursing a drink, fully planning to drink himself into stupor, but he had put his tumbler down somewhere through Malfoy's tirade and pushed his hands up into the mop of his curls, gripping it tight, trying to keep his head and his emotions together. He closed his eyes tight, swallowing hard, shoulders hunched.

"Why are you doing this?" Harry asked, abrupt, only just loud as he raised his head, finally looking at him. He felt worn out, his forehead tight.

Malfoy stopped talking. He was numb, overwhelmed, all at the same time. He had bad days now, and then less bad days. 

And then there were days that were just somehow particularly worse.

"Just stop, please," Harry said, that desperation contained beneath the low tone of his voice. He hated the way he sounded; exhausted, overwhelmed, pleading. "Whatever you're doing, Malfoy, just stop it, okay? Just  _ stop. _ "

There was a long silence, and the only response Harry could anticipate was nothing good or kind or sympathetic, only further mockery, so he pressed his fingers back into his eyes again, pressed them harder, the exhaustion and despair weighing him down even more.

A moment after, there were footsteps, quietly walking away.

It was only after that that Harry was confused by it all, in the clarity that came after having distanced himself from the events. Suddenly it all seemed a little off, a little too out of nowhere, like Malfoy had been playing a part of some sort.

Eventually, when nothing else made sense, Harry could only make the connection to his own panicked reactions, his nightmares of growing intensity and frequency, his low-spirited demeanour that he hadn't been able to hide, and wondered if Malfoy was simply repulsed by it all.

  
  
  


* * * 

  
  


That night, he had another panic attack in the bathroom, and Malfoy found him there.

Harry was too busy shaking, heaving, to see him come in. His head was faint from the shallow and quick gasps not reaching his lungs, his heart pounding wildly along to the heavy waves of nauseating fear and despair through him. 

He heard him first, the sound of his bare feet scuffing closer in the near-echo of the bathroom, but he was only sure of him by the hum between their bodies, the blur of him in his peripheral vision lowering by the wall. He had sat next to him with a shift of his body, and then his legs. 

Harry gripped his legs tighter, head between his knees, and closed his eyes, harder.

"Don't," Harry managed to grit out, through a dry and closed throat. His breaths heaved and shuddered through it, erratic and hitched and struggling to stabilise. He puffed out a hard, frustrated breath through the burning of his lungs, but it only choked him up even more. His skin was hot and sweaty. "For Merlin's _ — _ sake, just _ — _ leave."

"Give me your hand," Malfoy said, not leaving. He sounded as neutral as ever, not much tone to his voice. The words registered in Harry's slow and heavy brain a second too late. 

Harry blinked fast through the blur over his own knees, the black spots in his vision, confused.

When Harry didn't move, Malfoy grabbed his wrist, and Harry startled, finally looking at him, acting on his first instinct to pull away. He tugged, the joint pulling with it, but Malfoy kept hold of it in the air, not loosening his grip, not tightening either. He kept his gaze fixated on Harry, and Harry stared back at him, in a baffled silence.

Malfoy moved his hand with a small release of his grip. A thumb stayed circling around Harry's wrist, the rest of his long fingers opening, shifting over Harry's hand _ — _ and then curling, slowly, between the spaces of his own.

He felt it then  _ —  _ the ebb of the bond between them, deepening up Harry's nerves and washing through him with comfort, and with that, the tension drained from Harry's arm, the rest of his body following. The grip of panic in his throat and around his heart slowly eased with every breath, every wave of warmth melting through his cold, taut fear.

Malfoy let go only when Harry could breathe enough, made a slow retreat of his hand to his own lap. 

He was staring into the middle distance, in the baffled silence that followed, and Harry kept on staring at him. He could only see the sharp line of his jaw, the slight dip under his cheekbone, that looked more pronounced in this light. Malfoy scraped his teeth over the inner corner of his lip, unaware of the gaze on him. Harry wanted to say something, only he was exhausted now, two nearly sleepless nights and a panic attack later, and the words wouldn't come.

So he looked away from him, slower, blinking away the grit in his eyes, his brows deep together. He stared at a spot beside a bright bulb light instead. It ached in his eyes, but he was locked there, his mind blank and dimmed, barely able to muster the will to move. 

Malfoy sat there half a moment longer, and Harry wondered if he was waiting for him to say something, but just as he was dwelling on this, Malfoy stood up, a careful hand against the wall behind him to push him along to his feet. 

Harry watched him turn around and make his way to the door.

* * *

It took him days more to contact his Mind-Healer from Eighth Year. He would think a lot about going to Ron and Hermione, telling them about what was going on. They had been spectacularly busy these days, since their training had gotten so vigorous.

He didn't know why it was still so hard to go to them, all these years and a war after. He didn't know why something still kept him rooted and stuck and from being able to firecall them when he needed them, to show up at their fireplace without thinking twice about it.

But they showed up one day, a little out of nowhere. They had taken one look at the state of him and thrown their arms around him. They listened, when he finally told them about everything that was bubbling back up to the surface. They listened and responded and held him, and they did all the right things, and then they made him laugh again after weeks, Ron telling him a story about when he was four and Fred had tricked him into calling a much detested aunt a  _ hag _ , having been under the impression that it meant something entirely different.

After, as the wireless had been playing on, an old favourite of theirs came on, and Ron had turned it up, roped Hermione in. Hermione pretended to struggle back from it by a grip on Harry, the sound of their laughter louder than the music, and under the twinkling lights of their drawing room, it was simple, watching them waltz in a dance with a fond smile, laughing when Ron mock-ditched Hermione in favour of pulling Harry off the couch and into a dance.

After, they sat down on the floor, backs against the couch, smiling. Harry couldn't remember why he struggled to tell them anything, when they always made him feel lighter, even if just for a while.

It was quiet, and they stayed quiet until their smiles had faded too, and Hermione was just lying with her head on Harry's shoulder, her arm around his, Ron's arm around both their shoulders. She looked slightly morose and rueful.

"I'm sorry we didn't notice," Hermione said. "That you were struggling so much."

Harry shifted his cheek against his shoulder. "It's not your fault. You know I… you know I'm not good at telling people."

"Malfoy was the one that...you know," she said. "He firecalled to tell us that we ought to check on you."

"In his own way," Ron added. "You know, I spent a while trying to work out what there was to gain for him, and I still don't know what it means _ — _ "

"But maybe he's not entirely an arsehole now is what Ron might be trying to say," Hermione cut him off, with a roll of her eyes. Ron sighed, looking almost relieved that he didn't have to say it himself. 

There was a lapse in silence, wherein the three of them went inside their own heads. Harry was trying to process this. He didn't know what he thought.

"He still poisoned me though," Ron's voice piped up again after a while, his mouth squinched as he stared off into the distance.

Harry spent most of his time stroking colours on blank canvases until they formed pictures. Revealed places. Until they became people. It was soothing, therapeutic, knowing where he was going. What he was doing. What he wanted to do. He had a clear vision and all he had to do was create it into something visible and real. 

There was the side of a face, bushy hair over a shoulder blurring at the end, incomplete. A mouth pulled in a broad, open grin. Shaded colours of her dark skin, her hair, her eyes, blending together in an oily sort of picture. 

At the end, she finally became Hermione, caught half-way in a laugh, head thrown forward, face all drawn up in a wrinkle of her nose. 

He pulled the painting off the easel, left it up against a wall to dry in one of the empty rooms of Grimmauld Place beside a painting of his mother, and his father, and the two of them together, held to each other with his arm around her shoulders, smiling up at him. 

There was Ron and Hermione too, standing together in a similar way to his parents. There was Teddy, with his broad gummy smile, blue-haired. There was the painting of the sea, the sun as a high haze of orange above the horizon, spilling its fading light throughout the sky and the water. There was the night sky, a large moon over tall skyline buildings, with yellow-lit little boxes of windows. Below it was the shimmering surface of water, like a thin layer of glass catching blurry reflections.

He took up jogging, too, circled around the line of buildings and over to a park twenty minutes away, three times. Sometimes he ran, just ran as fast and hard as he could, trying to leave behind something – fear and anger and guilt, until it floated away with the pounding of his heart, the beating of his feet against the pavement.

He still woke up some nights the same way, gasping and shaking, but he used the spells that Guinevere, his Mind-Healer, taught him. She taught him one that made him hear the sound of rain, the crash of seawaves over the shore, a running waterfall, as clear as if it was right there in front of him or inside his head. She taught him another that made his senses more vivid, letting him focus better on the grounding sensations around him. Some nights Malfoy would quietly place his palm upward on the pillow between them, half-asleep, letting the bond soothe him when, in his frantic wanting to breathe again, Harry took it, curled it tremulously over his, letting it all pass easier and softer. 

These days, Malfoy spent a lot of time inside his potions lab, always the sound of clinking apparatus from the inside. Harry had only been to it a few times, when Malfoy wasn't home.

It was not long after that a vial of Calming Draught was left for him on the nightstand, and a few more vials of them in the medicine cabinet of the bathroom, with an unsigned note,  _ to be used sparingly, when needed most.  _ He didn't know what to do with the thought of Malfoy working in his lab, brewing potions for him.

Although that might have a lot to do with Malfoy's own reasons, Harry concluded, like not wanting to be disturbed from sleep in the late hours of the night, or having to watch Harry lose his mind every so often.

He threw a glance over his shoulder at Malfoy, standing at the counter stirring his frypan. "I'm going for a run," Harry said, not entirely sure what exactly made him want to tell him that. Malfoy paused a second, arm stilling, head twitching just so over his shoulder. He then turned back, continued on with what he was doing, humming back in response.

Harry nodded, but Malfoy wasn't looking, so he mumbled, "I'll… I'll be back in an hour." He waited a few seconds, half-expecting another response, but none came. He turned, walked through the corridors, out the door.

When he came back after the hour, there was no Malfoy, only a plate of eggs and buttered toast and a cup of black tea under stasis on the counter.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Harry didn't know that Andromeda had been in touch with the Malfoys, until he got there and happened upon Malfoy.

He was sitting by Teddy on the rug, an elbow hanging off of a knee, talking to him. He must have been there for a while, judging by the teacups in the sink. When he saw Harry, he seemed like he was about to stand until Teddy was putting a hand on his hair, patting it, saying something like  _ bab _ . Harry didn't understand he meant barber until Teddy dug a small comb, a magical plastic scissor that gave the illusion of hair falling whenever it was used, out of his chest box of toys.

"I didn't know you and him were in touch."

"He visits every Tuesday, and Narcissa every Friday. A fairly recent development, but I assumed he might have told you," was what Andromeda said, bemused. "You two live together. It must have come up at some point?"

Harry blinked, brows raised, rather astonished himself at how out of touch they were with each other's lives, how much they didn't ask, or tell each other, even after over a year of living in the same house.

"I _ — _ no, not really."

"Ah," Andromeda said, with a nod. "I see."

Teddy was waddling over some distance away, pretending to get a small plastic mirror some feet away on the rug  _ —  _ he was pretending to be the barber. Malfoy was playing a snooty customer, demanding that he was made to look handsome, making Teddy laugh with his undignified mock-exclamations when the infant waddled back over and showed him his face in a small plastic mirror.

"Do you..." Harry asked, almost mindlessly, still fixated on the scene. Something stirred in his chest, a strange sort of tug. "Do you really think he's changed?" 

There were some things that were hard to let go of, like his best friend writhing on the floor, foaming at the mouth. Like Hermione's face when she was called a mudblood. Like all the scars across Bill's face. Like Neville in his school years, small and chubby-faced and looking like he was on the verge of crying when he came back to the commons sometimes, and Luna in a grey cellar at the basement of a Manor.

Harry looked back at Andromeda, who smiled at him. She had an otherwise stern sort of face. "I understand your concerns, Harry. Tea?" she asked.

So she led him over to the sofa, and as she went to make tea, he met Malfoy's eyes, saw his face waver at the sight of him, his small smile flickering into a wisp. Teddy came pattering over to Harry, saying his name with all the collapsed syllables of a two-year old. It ended up sounding like,  _ 'ayee _ . Harry leaned forward, grinning broadly to catch him by the underarms. Teddy's little arms were over Harry's thigh, smiling toothily back at him. 

"Hello, Teddy bear." Harry picked him up and kissed his nose.

Malfoy stood up, dusting his slacks off. He went over to the kitchen, leaning in, saying something to Andromeda in a low voice. He slipped away quietly, through the door instead of the floo, most likely because Teddy would make a fuss about him leaving, like he always did about Harry, and Ron, and Hermione, about anybody that he liked coming over to visit. He liked having more people around to play with him.

It was around Teddy's nap time, so he fell asleep in Harry's arms, listening to him murmur a song. He went into his room and placed him gently in the crib. When he came back, tea was ready. Andromeda was pouring the cups.

"I highly doubt you think Draco is a threat to Teddy in any way," Andromeda said, once they'd sat down. "Do you?"

"No," Harry said. He picked up his cup. "But what do we really know about who he is right now? What he still thinks?"

"There isn't a lot I can say about where he's been. But I can tell you that the difference between who he was and who he is now," Andromeda said. "Is that he knows how wrong he can be."

Harry worried at a corner of his lip. He thought, maybe, some part of him noticed that, felt it. Malfoy was quieter, more serious and small compared to how he'd been at school. Like he was trying not to disturb something around him. "Yes, but it's just  _ — _ " He shook his head. "He's hurt people. People that I love." He looked up at her. "I don't know how to look past that."

Andromeda nodded. "And that is perfectly understandable, but for whatever it's worth, he  _ has  _ expressed remorse and shame."

Harry raised his brows. "He has, has he? Because as far as I know, he's never even apologised to anybody."

"He's not very good with that, no." Andromeda said, smiling a little ruefully. "But he's considered writing letters. Unfortunately, I suppose, it doesn't matter if he can't go through with it. Still, my point is, Harry _ — _ he is trying  _ now _ to be better, and that is all you can ask of a boy who hardly knew what the world outside of his Manor and his parents looked like."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "But does that really mean _ — _ "

Andromeda shook her head quickly. "You need not forgive him. That is your right, and the right of everybody he's harmed. But I do think it is at least something to be acknowledged, that he is no longer the same person he was years ago."

He didn't go home right away. He said his goodbyes, kissed her cheek and left through the door instead, taking a hazy walk through the street  _ —  _ trying to reconcile the past and present, the sneering schoolboy who was jealous and petty and bigoted, and the man that tried to soothe his panic attacks at night, that brewed him Calming Draughts and left meals on stasis for him and firecalled his friends to tell them to check on him, pretended to be a snobby customer in order to make his baby nephew laugh. 


	5. Chapter 5

It started with the quiet mornings, the wireless turned off, making the silence hollow and loud. Then it was the empty table, an empty chair in the kitchen except for meals, and when Harry went looking for Draco, he found him crammed into a corner of his makeshift potions lab _—_ formerly Regulus' room _—_ an old and cracked desk in the corner that seemed to be scrubbed with cleaning charms. It was where all his notes were scattered.

"So you're _—_ you've moved your stuff here then?" Harry asked, a shoulder against the doorway, arms crossed.

Draco didn't spare him much of a glance or a word beyond, "Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I wanted a more private space, Potter." He was flipping through the pages looking for something. 

Harry shrugged. "It just seems a bit stuffy in here, is all." He paused, and then cleared his throat. "I won't really mind if you… you can use the table if you want. Just leave me some space or something."

Draco looked up at him, seeming taken aback by this.

The thing was that Harry had been seeing Draco and his things in the kitchen for over a year now, or seeing him in the living room, with a drink and a song on his record player, or him with his violin. Now that he wasn't in the kitchen, and hardly ever came out of his lab beyond when it was necessary, it sometimes seemed like he wasn't in the house at all, and something about that didn't sit right with Harry.

Ron and Hermione came over for dinner that night. They were still rather busy with Auror and Unspeakable training, but they came over often on the weekends, or Harry went to them. Harry sometimes felt very inadequate looking at them, seeing where they would go, their passion for their fields, whilst all he did was, as Malfoy once said, 'sit around in a bookshop'. He had wanted something that was peaceful and quiet, and he was now realising that maybe he was just too used to chaos and noise.

It was also their free and easy love that made something in Harry shrivel up, hopeless and sad.

Draco had gone to the Manor before they arrived, announcing that he would be back in an hour. He was never there when any of Harry's friends were around, and it was only after Hermione told him about the apology letters she, Ron and Dean had received, and showed him her own, that Harry learned it was out of respect, trying to keep himself out of the way of those he wronged.

The letter had detailed, in a rather straightforward tone, the things he was deeply regretful and apologetic for: for calling her a mudblood, for what had happened to her in his home at the hands of his aunt.

Near the end of it was an acknowledgement that he did not expect any forgiveness or response from her, followed by a _but if ever you feel there is any way I can make amends, I hope you would let me know_.

"It's quite sincere," Hermione said, folding the letter back up.

"Did you write back?" Harry asked.

"No," Ron said.

"Yes," Hermione said. She glanced at Ron, who was looking at her in bewilderment. "I did. I told him I forgave him, as in, I don't hate him, and neither am I angry at him. I've moved on. But I'm still not comfortable around him just yet."

* * *

  
  


He was waking up to daylight, bright red behind his eyelids. Harry pulled a deep inhale into his lungs, regulating his heavy breathing, shifting over onto his back as he stretched his legs and arms. He opened his eyes, blinking hard to see through the blur and weight in his eyes, and tried not to look over next to him.

He ended up looking over anyway, a daily losing battle these days. Draco was still asleep, a hand under his cheek. His mouth was softened, muscles loose at the hollow of his cheeks, around his eyes. His prim and neat eyebrows were gently furrowed in slumber.

The shards of sunlight drew over him, pouring through translucent white curtains, all over him. A feeling stirred in Harry's chest, a sort of ebb, a swell that blew out as quick as it came.

 _I'm married,_ Harry thought, trying it out. He was looking at the face next to him. _I'm married to you_ , he tried to think, but it didn't entirely settle right, as if he was thinking that of a stranger. A disconnected sort of fact. A foreign taste in his mouth.

Draco woke up a bit later, with a stir of his narrow hips and legs that caught Harry's attention. His eyes were open, so very grey, softened by the frown of slumber right after waking. He woke fully, and was then locked in gaze with Harry for a few seconds.

There was a certain way that Harry looked at him, and then shied away, that Draco must recognise by now. 

He knew the way Draco looked, coming up to Harry when he was either bored or wanting it. He would always have this edge of a smirk at one corner of his mouth, stepping forward into his space, crowding him in, or pulling at Harry to crowd _him_ in against a wall, hands hot and heavy up his abdomen and scraping nails on his skin, asking Harry in a whisper, a breathy murmur over his mouth, _do you want to?_ Like they were about to kiss. Except that it wasn't something that they did. Kissing was for lovers, and that wasn't what they were.

Strange that he knew these things—what Draco looked like when he was naked, what he sounded like when he came, but still didn't know when he started playing his violins, or what his favourite food was. What colour he liked most.

"What's your favourite colour?" Harry asked him at breakfast, almost mindlessly, but for that vague thought he'd had that morning somewhere in the back of his mind, somehow still stuck, it seemed. The Bond-intensified sex, and the long run after, had him feeling good, and the words came easy in the lingering rush of it.

Draco blinked, raising his head up from its bow over his book. "What?"

"Your favourite colour. What is it?"

Draco stared at him for a moment. Harry thought he wouldn't answer him.

After a moment of appraisal, an obscure sort of look, Draco said, folding his arms as he leaned back on the chair, "Burgundy. Or Auburn. I suppose I should say certain shades of pink or red, then, but I wouldn't want you to think it's something like your Gryffindor red. That is an eyesore, truly."

It sounded very specific. Harry wasn't entirely sure of the exact shade of those colours, but for some reason he'd expected something much more _—_ somber, maybe. Black. Something much less mellow than shades between red and pink. He'd known his favourite colour was green and silver in school, all Slytherin pride.

"Oh," Harry said, not really sure what else to say. He was wracking his head to come up with something more interesting, but all he could say was, "Mine's blue."

"Hm," Draco said. "I see."

"Yeah." Harry shifted in his seat. He shrugged, glancing down at his hands on the table. His cup of tea. "Well. Now we know each other's favourite colour."

"Yes." Draco sounded like he was trying very hard to go along with this _—_ whatever it was. He cleared his throat. "It is certainly… something." 

There was a long pause, in which Harry awkwardly tapped his fingers on the table, and then concluded that this must be the end of their half-coherent conversation. He was about to pick up his spoon, set beside his plate. Draco's notes were stacked together, away near the edge, the table clean.

"You do have a lot of blue in your wardrobe," Draco said, suddenly, as if he'd just thought of saying this.

Harry looked up at him, blinking. "Yeah, I… I do have a lot of blue."

Draco nodded, looked a little flushed. His eyes sort of drifted. Neither of them spoke for a while after that.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Draco favoured strawberries and cherries in fruits. He'd been taking violins classes since he was seven. He was currently fascinated by and learning to play Jascha Heifetz' pieces. He was trilingual, the third being Italian. He liked butter biscuits. 

In return, Harry told him that he loved science-fiction books. He liked digestives. He'd been interested in art since he was a child, and used to collect a lot of art supplies. He used to watch a lot of television, in particular game shows and talent competitions, which he had to explain to Draco what it was _—_ he had been very strangely taken in by it, seeming to contemplate the concept of movies and shows for a while after. Harry hadn't known that was what was happening, when he went quiet. Five minutes later, he was piping up with a question, _how do they make all of that reach this… this tee-vee?_

Some days went like that, when talking was easy, topics branching into more topics, until they ran out of things to say. Other days Draco seemed less inclined for a conversation, or at least seemed more resistant and wary to it, though Harry wasn't sure what for.

"What is with you and all these questions?"

Draco was cocking an eyebrow, meeting his gaze. He set his quill aside. He unknowingly had a blotch of ink on his jaw again, a small streak in his hair. Harry had just asked him what his patronus was.

"Just asking."

"Yes. It seems you're _just asking_ a lot of things these days."

Harry felt somewhat embarrassed, even as he knew that was true, that it was new, either of them taking any sort of interest in each other's lives.

"You have ink on your face," Harry said, instead.

Draco frowned. He touched his face with his inked fingers, got more faded smudges there. Harry smiled, dropping his head a bit to hide it.

"You just got it even more now." Harry gestured a bit at his own jaw. "There's some here. And on your left cheek."

Draco wiped the back of his wrist over his jaw, scowling. He hovered it over his own right cheek, looking to Harry in question. Harry resisted the urge to reach out, clean it himself, touch the soft skin of his cheek.

Harry shook his head. "Sorry. I mean your right. That'd be my left."

"Oh, for Salazar's—" Draco stood up, rolling his eyes, annoyed. Harry's lips trembled on the edge of another laugh, biting them as he watched Draco push his chair back, presumably to head for a mirror. His eyes followed after Draco as he left the room, still smiling at the doorway where he disappeared.

Later that day, Draco asked him what he was doing, sounding only a little too casual as he clinked and clunked through the bar. Harry turned the canvas around with a lift, towards him, saying, "You can take a look."

On the canvas was an outline of a face, black hair, a scruff of a beard. The eyes were painted in, only the edges of the face filled in, shaded in darker colours that faded into lighter, uneven tones of oil paint. There was a smirking mouth, a radiant, easy mischief about the man.

"Not terrible," Draco said. He was examining it closely, this way and that, an almost-impressed flick of his brows and downturn of his mouth.

"Is that the highest praise I can get from you?" Harry asked, with a somewhat amused smile.

Draco smirked, a scoff through his nose. "Are you really so concerned about getting my praise?"

Harry shrugged, his nose twitching. 

So he continued on painting. Draco had made his way over to the couch, and he was drinking with a sprawl of his arm across the back of the couch. They didn't speak until Harry had almost wholly painted in the face, putting finishing touches on it.

"So what is this?" 

Harry glanced at him over the canvas. "What's what?"

Draco spread his hand out in a quick shrug of a gesture, an opening of his fingers before curling again. One elbow was on the arm of the couch. His drink was in his other hand, the sprawled arm, the tumbler held loose from the top. "What you're painting. Beauty? Someone you love?" There sounded an underlying wryness to it. 

_I capture beauty. I paint the people that I love_ , was what Harry had mindlessly answered with, the last time Draco asked him what he was painting. He'd forgotten, found it strange to remember having said something like that to him. That Draco remembered that, too.

"He was my godfather," Harry said. "Sirius Black."

Draco went silent. He spoke after a moment, when Harry had turned back to the canvas, brushing it up, leaning closer. "I see. He seemed… familiar." His voice was slow, cautious, and Harry suddenly wished he hadn't told him Sirius' name.

His mouth pressed tight together. "I know what you're thinking," Harry said, not looking at him. "And it's wrong. He was framed."

"Right. Well." There was a pause, still in that toneless, cautious way. "I suppose you'd know more about it."

Harry relaxed, shaking his head. "Sorry, it's just _—_ it's a touchy subject."

A while after, Draco said, "I do know about him, actually."

"How would you?"

"I don't suppose you want to know that." But it was enough of a blurry answer when Harry remembered Wormtail living at the Manor. 

  
  


* * *

The next time they ran into each other at Andromeda's, it was Harry having already been there for the past quarter of an hour. Andromeda was in the kitchen, making lunch. He was holding Teddy high on his shoulders, spinning around and drawing loud peals of belly-laughter from him. 

Draco had walked in and halted at the sight of Harry, and Harry halted at the sight of him, a small stumble just before his feet settled on the ground again, still with the remnant of a broad grin, fading.

Draco was clearly tense, but he relaxed minutely upon Harry looking up at Teddy, feigning a merry smile, "Oh, look who's here!" And Teddy's exclamation of _'Aco!_ accompanied by a messy, inharmonious clap of his tiny hands, a small bounce of his body. He placed Teddy down at his feet, giving him a light push, saying, "go say hello," and watched him waddle-run over to Draco.

He only noticed the black varnish on Draco's nails when Teddy was pulling at his finger, covered by the whole of his hand, examining it closely.

Draco snorted. "What? Do you want this as well?" That was how he talked to Teddy, like he was a very small adult that understood everything that was said to him. It was oddly sweet.

They were sitting on the rug, Harry's arms around Teddy, holding him on his lap as Draco took Teddy's foot in his hand _—_ the one with a silver watch fitted around his thin wrist _—_ holding it still very gently, his polishes neat and careful. He'd taken one of Andromeda's nail varnish bottles. He didn't want to do it on Teddy's fingers, because Teddy still had that terrible baby habit of putting them in his mouth.

" _Very_ uncouth," Draco admonished, but he was mostly distracted by the task at hand.

"Well, he's _two_. How graceful can he be?"

"We ought to teach him these things from the beginning, lest he grows up to be a graceless barbarian, wouldn't you say?" Draco smirked, not looking up. "Not unlike a certain someone amidst us at the moment."

"Hah, funny," Harry said, rolling his eyes. 

A smile twitched at Harry's cheek. He quickly looked down at Teddy, brushing his fingers through his bright blue hair to occupy himself. He was the most unmoving Harry had ever seen him be, enthralled as he watched his own little toes being coloured in.

He lifted his head again a moment after, had only meant to only watch what was happening, to be in the moment, but something focused in his mind on what he was looking at right then, and he was stilled by the odd flare of a feeling, a warm bubbling low in his stomach.

Draco was bowed over Teddy's toes, tucking one side of his hair behind an ear, quick and messy, trying to see. It still left behind loose, swirling tendrils.

He was beautiful.

He was beautiful, and Harry had known since forever that he was beautiful in a very conventional way, but was only just able to let himself think of it in words. He'd known it in a distant way back when they were in school too, maybe, when they'd hated each other and it hadn't mattered all that much how beautiful he was, because his cruelty had made him so ugly. 

He'd known it in all these months he had him in bed, transfixed by the rosy flush of his cheeks, and in the way he found himself outlining him in his mind, making a painting out of a moment that he stood in. In the mornings, the first sight of him, sitting cross-legged at the table in the shroud of daylight, at the counter making breakfast, softly asleep right in front of him on the other side of a pillow.

It just hadn't mattered so much, then. Somehow it mattered now, in some way, seeing him here like this.

They left when it was nearing nightfall. Andromeda did not insist for dinner, because by now everybody had the unspoken understanding that they couldn't stay long anywhere. Harry didn't know what came over him, only felt that he didn't want to go back home, but he looked to Draco outside the door as they were moving down the stairs together, said, "let's go out somewhere." 

Draco cocked an eyebrow. "Out," he said.

"Yeah," Harry said, shrugging, putting his hands into his trouser pockets. "Let's go out, have a drink or something. I don't know about you, but we've been cooped up too long at the house with… everything, you know. I don't feel like going back right now."

Draco eyed him. "The curse could act up any minute for us."

"Then we'll go back if it does. Come on, I'm tired of the same four walls."

That was how they found themselves sitting at the edge of a pier, legs hanging over it, knees brushing together.

The city lights twinkled in the distance, reflecting on the shimmer of water, like there was a thin layer of glass over the surface. A breeze swept through the two of them, playing up Harry's curls and making them wilder and in his face, strands of white-blond dancing light against Draco's cheek, in his eyes, until he brushed them back behind his ears again.

On the other side, under a bright yellow streetlight, somebody was proposing, and the woman was laughing, on the verge of tears. Draco was watching them, all bored and idle, but there was something private in the way he slowly tore his gaze away from them after a long time, back to the water as she pulled her new fiance up into a kiss, putting the whiskey bottle they bought, off-license, to his mouth.

"Did you have anybody?" Harry found himself asking, after a few drinks in his system to loosen him up, a silence. After the couple was long gone. "Before all of this?"

Draco tilted his face slightly in his direction, in that obscure, studious sort of way he did when Harry diverted from their usual way of interacting, either like he was working him out or contemplating his own reaction. He twisted a corner of his lips. "No. I didn't." A beat, and then two. "Did you?"

Harry shrugged. They were sitting very close, shoulders brushing. He could feel his warmth, the warmth of the bond pulling back. "Me? No." He thought briefly of Elias. "Not before this anyway." 

"What of your girl Weasley? Ginevra?"

Harry fiddled with the curled corner of the label. "We never got back together. Mutual decision. The feelings just weren't there anymore."

There was another shift of his head in Harry's peripheral, turning away. "I see." Harry darted a glance at him, and then away. It was nice out here, the night bright and clear, and though not many, the stars were scattered far and wide across the sky.

"I was told my entire life that one day I would marry a rich and upstanding pureblood woman," Draco said, after a while. The bottle dangled from his fingers, between his legs. His entire body seemed relaxed in some way, after the drinking. "There was always talk of a potential marriage between Pansy and I, but then… that was before everything else. Her parents wanted somebody much more reputable and clean, you see."

Harry wondered if he wanted something with her that he could never have here with Harry, "Did you want to marry her?"

"No," Draco said. "But I did try to court her, through third and fourth year on my father's orders, but I could tell she was just as disinterested in me beyond our friendship." 

"But trying to force two thirteen years old to date with the prospect of marriage in mind? That's fucked up." Draco made a noise, sort of agreeable, sort of _what can you do_ . There was a beat of a pause. "Well. Did your parents know? About you two not wanting _—_ " He gestured vaguely.

"What do you think? Parents like ours don't truly care for wants and desires. They care only for duty."

"That's… really fucked up," Harry pointed out. Again.

"Yes. Quite," Draco agreed. "So you keep saying."

"Did they, um… did they know you liked men?" 

Draco met his eyes, for a second. Two. He looked back out at the city lights across the waterfront. 

"I was fourteen when my father caught me kissing Blaise in my bedroom, under the guise of studying. He was…I'm sure you can imagine, _very_ unhappy. And I wasn't to tell anybody about it, and I was not to let it hinder my sense of responsibility as a Draco heir."

He took a gulp, a long one, pulled it away. 

"That is all." It sounded parroted, followed with a wry snort. "The common pureblood ideology, you see, is that marriage is duty. A contract, if you will, between two families. It requires only two things, respect and loyalty, in order to survive." Draco smirked, tossing him a glance. "One out of two, I suppose. And even that being forced. How wonderful."

Harry blinked, raising his eyebrows, ignoring the last comment. "What about love? Enjoyment of each other? Compatibility?"

"Anything to keep the bloodlines pure. I've grown out of it, I believe. There's a lot you learn when you begin to expose yourself to ideologies beyond the small and sheltered world of purebloods. And when you no longer have an over-controlling father that you're desperate to please anymore, it's much easier to break out of it."

"I always thought you had a good relationship with your father." Harry didn't say that it was about the only human thing that he'd known of Lucius.

Draco's jaw shifted, close-mouthed, and took another swallow of his drink. He didn't say anything, and it wasn't clear whether it was out of grief or anger or hurt or nothing at all, or perhaps all of it.

"Funny how it all turned out, didn't it?" Harry said, softly.

Draco hummed. He smiled, hollow and wry. "Very."

Harry looked ahead, down at the bottle in his hand. At the waves of water below, moving unhurried. "Ever wish you could be with somebody you wanted?" 

It was a redundant question, because there was only one answer to it, but Draco only said, "You ask a lot of questions."

"Somebody has to." Harry smirked. He nudged his shoulder. "If you could have anyone you want, Malfoy. Come on. Who would it be?"

Silence fell around them again. The wind was playing up wild, a hushed roar fogging up Harry's hearing, mussing up his curls, before they fell back into his eyes. He pushed it up and out of the way. At the lack of a response, Harry turned his head to find that Draco was looking away from him, quick, and then slower.

Just when Harry began to wonder if he'd crossed some line, Draco snorted. A corner of his mouth had lifted.

"Viktor Krum. I say, he was quite dashing."

"Yeah." Harry smiled. "He was, wasn't he?"

Draco hummed. Another beat. A quick glance again. "And you?"

"Oliver Wood."

"Ah. Oliver Wood. My only issue would be that he was a Gryffindor."

Harry laughed, small. It was still a little too loud in his woozy, heavy mind, to his own ears. There was that surprised raise of Draco's eyebrow, a longer glance, a hint of a smile, or a smirk. Harry couldn't tell from the mere wisp of it. He looked a little flushed from the drinks, Harry noticed.

Harry raised an eyebrow, smiled a little, something softened and warm in his chest from the alcohol in his system. Draco didn't see it, pulling a swallow from his bottle. Something focused in the haze of his mind, his smile fading, and he was taking him in, only just aware that he was. He was outlining the raise of a cheekbone, the long lashes framing silvery-grey eyes. The full, rouge lips, closed small over the rim of a bottle. 

_Pretty,_ was the thought that came unbidden, a little muddled and hazy.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for one panic attack scene

On the canvas, colours were stroked next to colours, blending into an oily picture of melded shades, stilled. 

In the end, what it became was the profile of a fair face. A high cheekbone, the shadowed hollow under it, a faded blush across. There was the dusting of long lashes, framed around a silvery-grey eye, mellowed by an expression of drunken leisure, and the pupil pointed somewhere afar. There were the messy waves of white-blond hair, tucked behind an ear. A cupid-bow, rouge mouth. The slope of a lightly freckled nose.

Harry spent some time making finishing touches upon it, improving details here and there, blending colours a little more until he was somewhat satisfied. The warm and cool colours looked unevenly toned, exaggerated just enough that it looked vibrant and slightly surreal, but he had always found something charming about that.

He kept this one away from the others. He waited for it to dry, shrank it and closed it inside a box, tucked the box into the corner of a locked drawer of his wardrobe.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


One morning, an awful, exhausting morning, Harry came back from a run, not feeling much better than how he'd left, and vyed for skipping breakfast. He was making to walk past Draco, who was lounging against the doorframe of the kitchen, only Draco put a hand to Harry's shoulder, stopped him there. He turned back into the kitchen, and came back a moment later with a foil wrap. 

"Have it later then, when you can," was all he said, pressing it to Harry's chest. It was warm. Harry's hands raised up to it, holding it close in baffled instinct—and in doing so, he accidentally brushed his fingers over the back of Draco's knuckles, a sweet fizzle up their nerves.

He ate it that afternoon whilst sitting on the counter, though half-heartedly so, and thought of it again, the strange kindness and care of the gesture. Then his thoughts warped, inexplicably, into his uncle yelling at him in his tiny cupboard, his aunt shrieking he didn't deserve to eat dinner, that he was living under their roof and they did him a favour by keeping him and giving him anything at all. 

Then they morphed into Molly, always trying to pile food onto his plates, and Ron and Hermione adding a spoonful of pudding, a sausage, a muffin to his plate, through Eighth Year, and he thought of Draco, this morning, wrapping up breakfast and lunch for him, the dinner under stasis left on the kitchen table these nights. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


It became a routine of sorts — Harry asking him something, though awkwardly. Draco trying to go along with it. Draco, asking him something back. Some days it went well enough. Other days it seemed both of them were struggling to work around the discomfort and oddness of it all.

Still, they were trying. Still, in the process of it, Harry learned much more about him, over the course of weeks like this. By now, he knew much of Draco's life story, and Draco knew his. It had become much easier to talk by then, even if they mostly seemed to circle around each other, avoided a lot of topics, wondered a lot about what was right to say and what wasn't, at least on Harry's part.

On some days, Draco would come in for a drink while Harry was painting in the living room, and he would ask him about it in that same overly casual and borderline disinterested way he did. But he asked, so Harry showed him — Molly and Arthur Weasley huddled together, smiling. Fred and George. A green forest from the perspective of standing upon a hill, a shimmery blue line of a river running through the middle.

"You don't animate them," Draco said.

"Er," Harry said, rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. "I mean. I don't think I know how to."

Draco tried to show him how, without a wand, but it took him several tries to focus his magic and really manage to cast it. He seemed bewildered by this.

Harry frowned. "Doesn't look like an easy spell."

Draco cleared his throat. "No." He blinked, and his eyes focused, a bit deliberate. "No, it's a bit… complicated."

Draco asked him other things, though he always spoke a bit like he wasn't entirely interested. Harry chalked it down to just his way of speaking in general. _How was your day?_ He would ask every night, or he would ask about his outing when he visited Ron and Hermione or the Weasleys for short hours, or he would come into the drawing room for a drink while Harry was painting and ask him what he was working on.

Sometimes Draco would ask him if he wanted a drink, and Harry would say yes. Sometimes he would settle beside Draco on the couch, on the very opposite end, and one night like this, they talked hours into the morning, eased by the warmth of alcohol and the loose tongue that came with fatigue and half-inebriation, and they learned more about each other than they ever had in the last year. 

Harry learned that, from the lack of what Draco said of his father, there wasn't much he wanted to talk about regarding him, except that he was away a lot of the time. That his mother taught him ballroom dancing. That he'd been playing violins for her since he could remember. That he started learning to cook when he was nine—his father actively discouraged this. His mother wasn't entirely happy about it, but she'd caved to his tantrums to be allowed for it, when his father wasn't there to stop him. He would then proceed to create the most disgusting combinations of food that he himself never dared eat. He would force all his friends to instead and demand praise. 

"God," Harry said, laughing. Draco's mouth quirked, his eyes bright as they darted down to the top of his drink. Harry took that in, grinning—the fold of dimples in his cheeks, shadowed in the firelight, the tuck of his hair. "Sounds like an absolute horror." 

"I'm sure," Draco said. "Most of them hid it well. But not Pansy. She made it very clear she hated everything I made, and flat out refused to 'undergo such torture'."

Then they had another night like this, days later. Then they had another, and another, until it started to get easier.

One night, fairly drunk together again in front of the fireplace, Harry said, "Will you play the violins? I'm always showing you my paintings, but you've never shown me your violin — your violin playing — "

The smell of smoke and wood was high in the air. In the warmth of inebriation, and the way everything looked as bright as it did hazy, Harry found himself transfixed by the firelights casting itself over Draco where he stood. It was strangely serene and lovely, with the body of the violin tucked under his chin — arm relaxed high, his bow poised over the string, and the way he moved it slow, tender to the point of melancholy.

He was probably a little drunk, pink across the nose and cheeks with it, and this stilted some of the musical notes. Even then it was beautiful, and Harry hadn't realised he was smiling a bit until Draco caught his eyes just a little ways from the end, and maybe that was strange, so he stopped, quickly, slightly embarrassed.

Maybe Draco noticed, maybe he didn't. The music faded off into a quiet finish, and at the end of it, he spread his arms, one hand around a bow and the other around the neck of the violin, and bowed in a sarcastic sort of curtsy. "I only accept praise," he said, smirking, and Harry laughed, somewhat fumbling in his drunken quickness, clapping his hands together. He was trying to affect a serious face and only barely passing.

Draco returned, taking his place beside him, and they stared into the fire silently for a long time after that. Harry glanced over at him, again. He was sitting back, one hand loose between his lap, drinking slowly from his crystal tumbler, and Harry thought, muddled, that Draco did look very nice when he was playing the violins. Thought, muddled, of leaning forward, of catching his mouth, of kissing him all the way down, until his back was flat on the settee. Thought, muddled, of their very first night here, and how lovely and tempting he always looked, then and now.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Draco stood at the counter pouring himself tea from the kettle, in his satin lavender robes again, humming very low along to a song playing from his wireless, his voice just a little over it. He did that on the days he was much less moody and uptight. Harry was watching him from the doorway, a faint and amused smile playing at his lips, unnoticed.

He pushed off the doorframe. When Draco noticed him next to him, he stopped humming, but he flashed him a quick smirk, falling with the glance back at the tea, putting in the teabag into his mug.

"You're in a mood," Harry said. Draco poured tea in another cup.

"And?"

"And nothing. It's just…" It was just strangely endearing, seeing him like this. "It's just rare. Seeing you not be a grouch. It's like…" He paused, frowning in thought. "It's like muggles finding bigfoot."

Draco was not amused or impressed, going by the glower he threw him, all tightened lips and a raised eyebrow. Harry laughed, smiling to himself, still, when he tore his eyes away from him. He picked up the mug Draco slid over to him, and subtly, he stepped closer to him as he did.

"You think you're funny, do you, Potter?" Draco said, grey eyes narrowing.

Harry was smiling. He shrugged. "Sometimes. What are your plans for the day?"

Draco would be making a visit to Teddy today, since it was a Saturday, after his noon classes.

Harry went to Andromeda's after breakfast. He was talking to Teddy, trying to get him to point out the different parts of the body. "Where are your eyes?" he asked. 

Teddy put tiny forefingers into them, wrinkling up his nose with a broad, toothless grin on his face. 

"And your nose?"

Teddy pointed at his ears.

"That's not your nose," Harry said, huffing.

Teddy pushed a finger at the tip of his nose, frowning, bemused. 

"Yes," Harry said, smiled and kissed his forehead. "That there."

Some time later, Teddy got fussy and wanted to go out, so Harry obliged, as if he could ever deny his godson when he had him all wrapped around his little finger. He jostled the light weight of the baby in his arms until he had a comfortable grip on him, calling out to Andromeda that he was taking Teddy outside, receiving a muffled response back. He opened the door and found Draco right there in his long black overcoat, his hand raised, just about to knock.

"Oh, I'm, uh," Harry said, gestured vaguely. "Well, I'm just taking him out for a bit, to the park nearby." 

Draco stood, glancing at Teddy. "Oh. I see." There was a silence. "Well. I suppose I will…"

"Do you want to come?" Harry found himself asking, and hoping he would say yes.

He did say yes. 

Draco went inside for a moment, announcing his greeting to Andromeda and that he was going outside along with Teddy, before he came back out, clicked the door shut, slipping his hands in his pockets and moving down the stairs.

"You're here early," Harry said, jostling Teddy a bit in his arms. "I thought you were going to have classes today?"

Draco looked at him, took a second too long to respond. "I asked for leave." 

Harry frowned at him, bewildered. 

"I didn't feel like it today. So?"

"Nothing. I've just never taken you to be somebody that would miss out on classes just because you didn't feel like it."

Draco hummed, but said nothing else. He looked slightly sunken-eyed, though as far as Harry knew, he was no longer staying awake late into the night anymore.

At the park, Teddy insisted on being put on his feet. Harry kept a grip around one of his small hands, and Draco took his other in order to keep him balanced, because he always got very apprehensive if Teddy ever fell down too fast and started crying. For all his jesting and speaking to Teddy like he was a little adult, he was much too careful with him, as if he didn't entirely trust himself not to hold him too hard and hurt him.

They walked down the cobble-grey path like that, with Teddy waddling between them, his little shoes squeaking with each step. It was nice. It was nice to just be walking down a park with him, even if they didn't talk much, and then to settle down on a bench, watching him guard Teddy with an arm to his front, turned sideways to him. His other arm was resting on the back of the bench, having a mock-serious conversation with Teddy's gabbling of a story only he understood. He was telling it as if he was appalled by something, though he was only stringing together nonsensical words and noises, baby brows all furrowed and tiny fists clenched.

"Salazar!" Draco said, feigning outrage. "And then what did you do? Did you tell him off for it?"

Harry slung an arm over the back of the bench, rubbed a hand over his curls, watching the two of them, smiling faintly.

"You're good with him," Harry said. Draco looked at him, visibly surprised by the compliment, flushing slightly.

In the evening back at Andromeda's, they went to the backyard, where Harry flew low and careful on a broom with Teddy, who was gripping the end tightly, giggling on a squeal. Draco must have come in at some point, lounging into the doorframe with his arms folded over his chest, graceful and cat-like as ever.

"There's an extra broom there, if you want," Harry said, nodding towards a small cupboard. 

Draco shook his head. "No. I'm alright watching."

Harry didn't say much, but he remembered the last time he saw him on a broom, felt his heart pounding and his body flush against his back, and his arms painfully tight around Harry's waist. He remembered the heat of flames licking up all around them, how terrified he'd been.

Draco pushed off the doorframe then, made his way over. "Actually, I'd like to try, with Teddy."

"Yeah, sure. Come on," Harry said. He got Teddy off the broom first, and then got off himself. Teddy immediately grew fussy about that, wanting to get back on it, saying a word that was supposed to be _broom_ but just sounded like 'woom'. "Just make sure you stay low and have a good hold on him."

He got himself another broom, flew alongside them.

"Do you remember that day in the Room of Hidden Things?" Draco said.

"Of course," Harry said. "Why?"

Draco glanced at him. "Nothing. I was just thinking about it." His throat convulsed. He looked down, at the top of Teddy's head, who was nestling his hair back against Draco's chest, trying to see him. He flicked a small smile down at him.

"Were you really going to give me over to Voldemort?" Harry asked.

Draco didn't look at him. "I don't know. Wasn't really my idea. I mostly just wanted my wand back. You can imagine it was hard to go through a warzone with a wand that didn't entirely obey me, because it wasn't mine."

Harry nodded, seeing himself floating above the grass.

"I'm sorry," Draco said, quiet, after a long few minutes, which was surprising enough to snap Harry's head up.

"For what exactly?"

There was a pause, a twitch in his mouth as if he was trying to work out if he wanted to say what he did. 

"I want to say everything. Only that would be a lot of things, and I suppose that would be somewhat underwhelming, wouldn't it be? To…" He didn't finish what he was saying. His jaw worked, teeth clicking. "So I'll say it for that, right now. For cornering you in the Room of Hidden Things, making it harder to end it all."

Harry remembered, vaguely, the wand being knocked out of Draco's hand. Draco, screaming at Crabbe and Goyle to not kill Harry. The fiendfyre after.

"I'm sorry about Crabbe," Harry said, after a while. Draco nodded. His face was carefully blank, and he seemed to be busy adjusting his grip on Teddy, settling him better on the broom by his underarms.

"Do you, um... like children?" Harry asked, trying to stave off the dark and uncomfortable energy that had taken over the space between them. "I mean, you probably had to, didn't you?"

"Well, that doesn't mean I do," Draco said, with a scoff. He looked down at the top of Teddy's head, a slight smile twitching a few seconds after, which made Harry think he did like one, at least.

"What about the whole — I dunno, pureblood, must-beget-an-heir thing? You probably had all that upended with this. The curse and all."

Draco hummed. "Frankly, I'm feeling quite alright with that," he said.

Harry didn't know what to say to that.

"Well. What about you?"

"I do," Harry said. "I want them."

Draco eyed him for a moment, seeming strange. He opened his mouth to say something, but Andromeda's voice piped up from the door, telling them it was time for Teddy's nap. Harry gently pulled Teddy off the broom, Draco planting his oxfords back into the grass and helping him get off. Teddy was clearly getting irritable without his nap, and yet not ready to stop flying. It took both he and Draco too much time to coax Teddy away, and even then, he was crying as he was being taken away by Andromeda.

"We'll do it again next week, okay? I promise," Harry said to him loudly across the distance, frowning for quite a while afterwards.

Harry went to the storage some time later, and got out a Golden Snitch.

"How about a game?" Harry asked, smiling slightly, mounting the broom again.

"What, for old time's sake?"

Harry shrugged. He kicked off the ground, until he was high up in the air. He smirked, bouncing his eyebrows down at him.

Draco huffed, turning his head away, that private edge of a laugh. He lifted his head again, meeting Harry's eyes with his own, smirking back. They seemed so bright in the squint of daylight. "Alright," he said, low, as if accepting a challenge.

He flew beautifully, just as ever.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Now that they were doing better, Harry felt the curse quieten a bit. There wasn't as much discomfort, or discomfort turned to sickening malaise, nor as much need for the necessitated contact anymore.

Harry started coming down to the drawing room in the evenings, when the violins would begin to play up. He would pretend to be reading, or painting, and just watch Draco play over the top of his book, or his easel and canvas, only half-paying attention to it.

"What are you reading?" Draco asked, having settled next to him on another weekend night, leaning back with his open bottle.

"Catcher of the Rye," Harry said. "Have you read it?"

"No," Draco said. There was a pause. "I must say, the first time I saw you with a book in hand, I had quite the shock, considering the fact that I'd never seen you touch one all through school." He feigned an expression, all downturned mouth and raised brows, as if Harry had exceeded his expectations. 

"I read," Harry said, huffing at his smirk, and taking it for the teasing it was. "I read all my books before coming to Hogwarts. Picked up the habit again through Eighth Year. I was too busy trying not to get killed to have the time before that."

Draco smirked slightly, passed Harry the bottle. Harry drank from it. He liked the easy sharing, the almost-intimacy of it. "Alright. I'll allow you that one." He paused, drank from the bottle when Harry handed it to him. He could see Draco glancing over at him, quickly looking away. "I have heard all the stories. About you in school, I mean. The Basilisk, the graveyard and all that. You never talked much in detail about our, you know, Seventh year—"

"I don't want to talk about it," Harry cut him off, abruptly. "Just. I don't want to talk about the war, or anything like it. So don't ask me anything about that."

There was a long silence. "I see." 

Harry sighed. "Sorry. I just don't like to think about it." Draco handed him the bottle again.

"I taught myself ten different protective spells that year, did you know," Draco said, after a while, a derisive sort of smirk, after he got the bottle back, took a good pull. He had drawn it away from his mouth, voice still rough around the burn of alcohol. "I would put all of them on our door every night. Every single one of them. And then I'd remove them too, every morning. It would be such a hassle, Salazar. Only I was too bloody terrified to let myself not bother with it."

Harry's brain snagged on the 'our room'. "Did you share your room with somebody?"

"No," Draco said, frowning for a second, before he seemed to understand what he'd let slip. "My parents and—I… I slept on the floor of their bedroom that year, because—well, _they_ didn't quite—leave much room—but I preferred being close to them anyway because—" His voice faded off, throwing a quick glance at Harry's face again, back down at the top of his drink. He made a sort of scoff in his chest, one corner of his mouth curling mirthlessly. "You think I'm pathetic."

Harry frowned, bemused. "No. I don't think you're…" He thought of some sleepless nights in a tent, a forest, watching the rise and fall of Ron and Hermione's chests when he couldn't stave off the fear, wishing he could have everybody he loved in front of his eyes again. "I understand."

There was the lapse of a silence, where they just passed the bottle between them and drank.

"Where are all your friends from school?" Harry asked, after the second time he got the bottle back. "I mean. You never have anybody over except your mum now."

Draco raised his fingers, a thumb against the pad of a finger, as if counting them off. "Pansy's married some filthy rich pureblood in Greece. Salazar, he's old. Blaise is somewhere in Italy, doing who knows what. Greg is… going through a hard time. I don't know. He's the one I still owl out of them anymore, but he rarely replies. Luna…"

"Luna?" Harry asked, surprised. Draco glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. "You and Luna are friends?"

"I wouldn't have expected it either, two years ago."

"How did _that_ happen?"

"Well, we spent a lot of time together, during the—" Draco gestured, vaguely, as if finding it difficult to say. He cleared his throat. Harry nodded, as if to tell him to go on. "I would go down with food, some tarot cards and a chessboard. And we'd just play together, and talk for hours. Mostly, she would ask me all these questions that—that just broke down everything I had once believed, until I could no longer make sense of why I ever thought they were true." He paused, and then huffed slightly, sounding almost fond. "She knows how to make sense when she wants to."

"Do you still talk?"

There was a certain kind of pause, a subtle flex of his throat, before he said, "She sends me letters. Yes."

"But you don't owl her back," Harry said, more a statement than a question.

Draco's jaw worked, closed tight. "Not a lot." Quieter, "I do believe it's best that she just forgets me entirely, and everything else, sometimes."

"Doesn't sound like she wants to forget _you_ , though, if she's still sending you letters."

Draco eyed him, in that studious sort of way he did sometimes. Then, there was a flicker at a corner of his lips, a slight half-smile. He hummed, softly. "Perhaps."

Harry couldn't help the way his own smile came at that. Draco's eyes drifted away, then, turning his head. He raised the bottle to his mouth again, but the hint of a smile lasted, still, around it.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


That night, Harry woke up gasping again, only this time he couldn't breathe at all. He fumbled out of the sheets, gasping hungrily for air, putting his feet on the ground and folding over. He wanted to stand, go to the bathroom, only he could hardly move, his head dizzy and light.

"Potter?" There was a rustle from behind him, and then a face below him. There were hands on his shoulders, his biceps. His first thought was to push them away, only the waves of calm moved down his body, and he stilled. It felt good, soothing, his mind going a little quieter, the horrid images softening, blurring away. He was still struggling for air, his body not quite caught up. "It's alright."

Draco's voice washed over him. He was a silent presence at his feet all throughout, only there with his hands on him, moving down his arm, his wrist. He casted for Harry the spell of the sound of waterfall in his mind, his fear and choking panic falling away bit by bit with the strong rushing of water, the warmth of a hand, the artificial calm of magic between them.

Draco stood up only when his breaths steadied almost completely. He left the room and came back with a glass of water. 

For a moment, there was nothing said.

Then, roughly, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"Salazar," Draco huffed, a little to himself. Then to Harry, "no, Potter, this must be the most unforgivable thing you've ever done, awakening me from my wonderful dreams of becoming a world-renowned potioneer winning his third ever award."

Harry rubbed his face, trying to hide his slight smile, a breath of amusement moving through his chest.

"Your Mind-Healer?" Draco asked, with a little uncertainty, which sounded strange coming from him.

"I thought I was having it under control now," Harry said, sighing. He had stopped seeing her for the last month. Quieter, he said, "I suppose not."

Draco didn't say anything for a moment. "Was it about…"

"Yeah," Harry said, when he trailed off. He said nothing else after. Draco didn't ask anything more either, and Harry was grateful. The next day, he firecalled his Mind-Healer again.

  
  


* * *

  
  


In April, Teddy's birthday came around, for which they had a celebratory party at Andromeda's.

Draco had shown up a little late. He had dressed up nicely in a burgundy suit and trousers, a black shirt. His hair had grown long enough now to be swept back from his face in a wavy half-up, half-down.

Harry blinked, turned his head away, not having realised that he was outlining him in his mind again, like he would trying to capture the beauty of a moment, a sight. A feeling. He focused his attention on Teddy instead, in his arms. His hair was a flaming red, and he was giggling uncontrollably at Ron's funny voice and silly faces amidst the hubbub of murmured conversation and distant chatter throughout the room.

Hermione was watching the two of them with a smile, a head to Ron's shoulder, and then a small, hushed kiss to it, a moment after. Ginny was there, and so was Luna, having returned from wherever her occupation as a magical wildlife photographer had taken her. The two of them were talking by the fireplace. George was with Molly in the kitchen, helping with dinner, vegetables and jars and dishes swooping through the air around them. Andromeda had made her way over to Draco at some point, when Harry looked over again. She was talking to him with a pleasant smile, a hand patting his cheek fondly before she turned and he followed, looking a little more sure with somebody he knew.

"Aco," Teddy said, pulling saliva-soaked fingers out of his mouth, pointing at Draco. Then he rigidly arched his back, insisting to be released, and so Harry did. He set him down on his feet gently between his knees, balancing him with a lingering, loose grip under his arms. 

He watched Teddy waddle-run over to Draco, whose cheeks folded into a slanted half-grin. He caught Teddy by the underarms, appearing mock-stern and jesting as he spoke to him, silvery eyes narrow and bright. Teddy laughed around his own fingers, face alight, with the hint of two baby teeth through a broad, gummy smile. Draco pulled lightly at Teddy's wrist, with a grimace that had Harry amused, ducking his head.

At some point, Luna had made her way to him, smiling, pulling Draco in close by the shoulders. There was a very strange look on his face, when he held her back after a delayed second of astonishment, settling his chin to her shoulder.

Dinner was ready by the next hour and had everybody gathered at the table, Harry having ended up next to Draco, and Andromeda on the other side of him, and Luna on the other side of her. 

Conversation was loud and comfortable, full of stories that either took place in rapt silence, or in a chaos, adding details over each other, one taking over to tell their perspective, laughter rising high in the middle, at the end. Harry was throwing out his own ridiculous remarks every now and then into the collective, Ron having snorted so loud at one of them that he choked on his drink.

Draco had excused himself somewhere through the chaos and noise. Andromeda had been the only one to notice, having nodded to him, frowning slightly. He seemed to be in some haste, had the back of his hand under his nose. Harry noticed this vaguely, but by the next second, he was distracted by Ron calling for him, laughing, asking him if he remembered that one time at the beach, when Hermione had lost her footing in a particularly aggressive wave of the sea and dragged Ron and Harry both down by the back of their shirts along with her. 

"Well, you know how it goes, Ronald. We do everything together as a trio."

"Even if that's bloody drowning together?"

At some point, Harry glanced over at Draco, having come back beside him, and found him completely outside of it. Without Teddy or Luna or Andromeda, he couldn't seem to look up from his own plate, pushing at the vegetables and chicken with the tip of his fork, seeming disinterested. 

Harry was caught in the question of what had him so suddenly withdrawn, if it was discomfort, but then he'd caught Draco smirking slightly at something he said, and for a reason Harry couldn't entirely fathom, it lingered in the back of his mind all throughout dinner. Harry looked over at him more often after this, after everything he said, even catching sight of a slight smile.

Then there was cake, Andromeda's hand firm over Teddy's around the hilt of a blunted cake knife, gently guiding him to cut through it. A small part of it went wasted in a cake fight, all the Weasley siblings smearing it over each other's faces, _as tradition,_ Ginny always said on everybody's birthdays, and Teddy getting a small dollop on cream on his nose, which had him giggling.

Tradition also constituted Ron and George trying to get at Harry's face, as stand-in for Teddy, skidding around here and there in attempts to corner him whilst he jumped over couches and skirted around chairs and furniture, the three of them laughing, whilst Molly whacked Ron and George on the shoulder whenever they ran by her, scolding them for bothering her poor boy.

He had caught sight of Draco next to Luna on the sidelines, arms folded. He was looking down and away, lips rolling back into a bitten smirk, as if on the edge of a reluctant sort of laugh.

After that was a dance party, the wireless playing a song as Harry kneeled before Teddy, holding his hands and swaying them gently as he waddled along to it, brown eyes bright. Harry was smiling back at him. He was still thinking about Draco in the corner, the hint of crescent-moons in his cheeks.

Over Teddy's curls, Harry could see Ron spinning Hermione under her arm, grinning broadly, and Ginny and Luna dancing, the two of them standing very close. Ginny's hands were on the curve of Luna's back, and she seemed to be laughing a little too much as she talked to her, her freckled face flushed with delight, her eyes roving over Luna's face, whose arms were around Ginny's neck. Draco was on the couch with a drink, engrossed in conversation with Andromeda. 

Longer after, when Teddy was falling asleep on Harry's shoulder, Andromeda had come to take him and carry him into his room. Luna went to borrow Draco, drawing him up into a dance. She was smiling, hazy and faint, nodding to what he said, speaking back to him in her soft voice.

"You've been looking at him a lot today," Ginny's voice piped up, and when Harry turned, he saw her leaning close to his shoulder, hands folded behind her.

"What?" Harry asked, frowning.

Ginny nodded towards Draco and Luna. She took his hand, stepping close to him, Harry taking the cue and putting his hand to her mid-back. The two of them moved easily into the positions of a dance. "Malfoy. I saw you at dinner. You kept smiling and looking at him." She stood on her toes to look over his shoulder, and then she shrugged, made a face, humming. "And I mean, alright. I get it. He grew up well, and he _is_ looking quite nice right now, isn't he?"

Harry pushed down on her shoulder, snorting, "Make it a bit more obvious you're talking about him, why don't you?"

Ginny raised an eyebrow, smirking. "You're not denying it."

Harry looked at her, swallowing. "It really isn't like that."

"Well, you're always the last one to notice things, aren't you." 

Harry frowned. "Hey."

A silence lapsed over them, then. He watched Draco and Luna, dancing together in a slow sway. His mind was running vaguely over her words a bit, unsettled, still frowning. He looked back at Ginny. She was staring over his shoulder, the same place he was. She was smiling in a way he could only ascribe the reason for to Luna.

"Wasn't very much a fan of his Dad, you might know. But…" Ginny went on saying, watching the two of them talk to each other easily, Luna smiling. Draco's eyes were bright too, though his smile was considerably smaller, but no less genuine. "I suppose if that's two people I care about seeing something in him…then I can try to understand."

Harry had a drink after that, and then two, sat in the corner as the party went on. Draco was sitting in a circle of Luna and Ginny, and he was seemingly getting along quite well with Ginny. She was laughing, glancing over at Harry along with a smiling Luna, while Draco hid the quirk of his mouth into the rim of his glass.

"He's revealing all your weird habits to us, Harry!" Ginny shouted over the music at him. 

"Is it true you show up shirtless after a run in front of his tutor?" Luna asked loudly.

"Showing off those beautiful abs!" George came in from behind them, even though he wasn't even a part of the conversation, all flushed and grinning. Then he was sitting down on the opposite arm of the couch, looking at Draco, saying something to him with a smirk, gesturing at Harry.

Some of Draco's hair had gotten loose from his half-up, wavy tendrils falling at his temples, and his eyes looked more silver than they ever had, in this haze of inebriation, the warm lights of the burrow. He had taken his burgundy suit off, folded it over the arm of the sofa, left only in his trousers and black shirt. 

Harry must be quite drunk now, feeling the strange swoop in his stomach. When Ron came to ask him, "Why the long face, mate?" was when he realised he wasn't doing a very good job of hiding his dour mood, seeing Draco laugh at something George had said, brows raised as if he was surprised by it himself. He was thinking of what Ginny had said, had implied. _You've been looking at him a lot today_. Harry tore his eyes away from him.

"Nothing. I'm fine," Harry said.

"Right," Ron said. He glanced over in the same direction Harry was looking a few seconds ago. "So, um. You and Malfoy…"

"I'm going to the loo," Harry said, cutting him off. He got up and moved for the stairs.

There in the bathroom, he closed the door behind him, stared at the mirror in front of him, his own face staring back. He was slightly flushed. He breathed, in and out, swallowed and let his head fall back.

"I don't want him," he said to the room. Only the music coming from the drawing room, distant and echo-like, came back to him.

He got out ten minutes later, and announced to the room that he was leaving, to everybody's visible disappointment. Ron was saying, _but what about birthday Quidditch?_ But they had stayed here long enough anyway. Harry looked at Draco, cocked an eyebrow, as if to say, _are you coming or not?_

"No. I'm having fun," Draco said, with a shrug, reclining sideways against the arm of the couch in a relaxed, lazy posture, an elbow on top of it. He had his glass in that hand, and he was flushed, clearly well on his way to being drunk as well. He shooed him away. "You can go on. Be boring at home on your own."

Harry tried to reign in his anger. "I can't _go on_ if you—" He stopped, breathed, feeling agitated and antsy. He then moved closer to him. "Come on, Malfoy."

Draco stared at him, a twitch of something between his brows. He leaned closer, quietly, "Is it the—"

"No, for Merlin's—" Harry said, looking around him quickly. Everybody seemed bemused. He closed his eyes. "No. Whatever. I'm going."

It was when he got to the floo that he heard footsteps behind him. Draco had pulled his suit onto his shoulders again, folding his overcoat on his arm. Harry said a general goodbye to everybody, and the roar of a green fire took them home.

He brushed ash off his shoulder. Draco stood there leaning a hand against the top of the fireplace for a moment, as if he was waiting for his feet to steady.

"And why exactly did we leave so early?" Draco asked, then, moving over to the hooks. He was tilting his head slightly over his shoulder, reaching his arms up high and hanging his coat on it. Harry thought it rather poncey for him to be wearing overgarments even in April.

"I'm going to bed," Harry said, moving for the door. 

Draco turned fully, tracking him as Harry passed by him. "What's the matter with you?"

"It's none of your business, is it?" 

"Isn't it?" Draco asked, following him. "You dragged me out of the party, which I _was_ rather enjoying, I'll have you know."

"I didn't 'drag you out' of anywhere. I was going to leave you there, wasn't I?"

"Why are you so—" Draco was reaching for him, a warm hand around Harry's elbow.

"Would you just stop asking me all these damned questions!" Harry spun around, abrupt, throwing him off. Draco stumbled to a stop in front of him, brow raised. "It's getting on my nerves."

Draco scoffed, derisive. "Weren't _you_ the one that started all this in the first place?"

"What do you care anyway," Harry said, anger flaring wildly, something else under that, something quite like fear. "You don't give a damn about me, and I don't give a damn about you. I don't feel a thing for you! And I'll never — _never_ feel whatever this sick curse wants me to feel and I want you out of my life already!" He breathed, heavy and hard after his outburst, the confusion at his core tangling him up further. Nothing he said made him feel better, or felt like the reason why he was angry right now. It drained out of him. His chest heaved, slow, and he swayed slightly on his feet. The world looked surreal, too bright. He was left with something that only made him feel weak and tired, croaking, "I don't want you."

Draco was just standing there, his face very still, controlled, his eyes unwavering past Harry. "Done then?" he asked, in a low voice, when the silence persisted after, long and hollow.

Harry turned around and left the room.

It took him a while to fall asleep, the guilt sinking deep in his chest, and yet, unable to bring himself to go back down and face Draco. He felt out of control, off-kilter and embarrassed. He felt angry, still, only this time it was turned inward. He tussled in his bed a bit, fell into an uneasy sleep in what must be ten minutes later.

He was roused from sleep in another blink, his head pounding. When he checked the Tempus, it had been an hour since they'd returned from the party. More than that, he felt the beginnings of a nauseating malaise through his body. He looked beside him. The other side of the pillow was neat, untouched.

He made his way down the stairs. Draco was still sitting on the couch by the fireplace, still in the clothes he'd worn to the party, his coat over his arm. He was just staring off into the middle distance, a furrow between his brows. He was quivering slightly, his fists in the knees of his trousers, the curse perhaps having acted up for him for a good while now.

"Draco," Harry said, quietly. His throat felt strange, a little dry. His temples still throbbed from the alcohol in his system.

Draco blinked when he looked to him, as if breaking out of his reverie. His face fell carefully smooth, gaze cool.

"Back to yell at me some more for absolutely no reason?" he drawled, a curl at his mouth.

"No, I… fuck," Harry whispered, closed his eyes. He rubbed at his face, the guilt twisting his stomach. "No. I'm so sorry. For… I don't know what came over me. I was so out of line. I shouldn't have done that."

"Quite a convenient time to have your realisation. No matter, Potter," Draco said, still sounding very cold. He stood up, adjusting his folded suit over his arm. "You understand I'm under just as much necessity as you." 

"That's not why I'm apologising. I was an arse." Harry swallowed hard. "You didn't deserve that."

"I came along because I was… you..." Draco said, trailing off. He scoffed, looking away. "Whatever. Come on then."

Harry opened his mouth. Draco shouldered past him quickly, nearly knocking into him if Harry hadn't moved a little aside. His jaw shifted, mouth parted around another apology. He sighed, closing his eyes, closing his lips together. He turned around, then, and followed after Draco, not looking forward to a cold, awkward necessitated contact, feeling sick with mild hangovers and shame and as if they'd just gone ten steps back.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The next time he woke up, it was just when the beginnings of a pre-dawn haze was coming into the room. Draco was sitting on the windowsill, one knee up, looking out. 

Harry got out of bed, feet planting into the floor, and went over to him. The window was large enough for them to sit together on the sill, with some space between their feet.

"Still angry at me?" Harry asked, quietly.

Draco didn't say anything. His throat was convulsing.

"No," Draco said, just as quiet.

 _You're hurt_ , Harry was about to say. _I hurt you_.

His chest felt tight. "I'm so sorry," Harry said, again, swallowing.

They'd been doing good, and then Harry had turned around and ruined it all, talked to him so awfully.

"I don't blame you for what you feel. Potter," Draco said. His voice was a bit raspy, and from the denying turn of his face, the sunken eyes of his profile, he was clearly tired, like he didn't sleep much, if at all. Like he'd been thinking all night. "My life was saved, with this curse. But your life was only ruined. And I do believe that, somewhere within yourself, you blame me for what happened to you." His mouth parted, working, stayed like that for a few seconds. Quieter, "I would _never_ have invited you to my home if I knew. I swear."

Harry stared at him. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know if he blamed him for something he was just as much a victim of. He didn't feel, at a visceral level, that the reason for his outburst last night had much to do with any of that.

"I don't want you to want me. I…" There was a silence. It seemed to last a second too long. Draco's jaw shifted. He was still not looking at Harry. "I'll likely never want you that way either. And you think we have to… to love each other for these two decades to work, but maybe we don't. Maybe we only have to be good to each other. Maybe _that_ will be…" His eyes were distant, slightly hazed. The jut of his throat shifted, very subtly. "Maybe that will have to be enough."

The rest of dawn, they listened to the birdsong begin to chipper up, watched the sun come up in the way it brought light brighter and brighter into the room, a haze of red to orange to yellow. The rest of dawn, it was just the two of them, sitting together there, silent and inside their own heads. Harry kept thinking of everything Draco had just said, dwelling in the strange sense that something hadn't quite resonated when Draco had said, _I'll likely never want you that way either._ When he told him that maybe they didn't have to be in love to make this work. Like it wasn't entirely what Harry wanted to hear.

When Harry shuffled into the kitchen after his shower that morning, a towel around the nape of his neck, Draco was in the kitchen, looking fresh and clean after his own shower, white shirt tightened at the waistband of his pressed trousers. His hair was still damp, thick and tousled together from it, the side to Harry all tucked behind his ear, some of the fringe hanging free on the opposite side of his face. His head was tilted slightly over the stove, hand around the handle moving it around, buttoned sleeves pushed up a bit on a thin arm.

Harry came to stand next to him and grabbed two mugs from the cabinet above. He heated the kettle on the stove, poured the boiling water in two mugs after it was done. He put five sugars, two spoons of milk in one, and slid it over.

They shared a slight, tentative smile, Draco's so light it was a mere apostrophe at the corner of his mouth. He looked warm and tempting and lovely like that, looking back down at the frypan with his shower-damp hair and still that sweet apostrophe smile. He looked like somebody Harry wanted to wrap his arms around, tuck his nose into the hinge of his jaw, kiss his neck.  
  


* * *

  
  


Sometimes he would sit there, on his stool in front of his easel and canvas, and all he would be able to think about was a yellow streetlight at a pier, a hand around a wine bottle. Firelights and the body of a violin under a chin, a hand around the fingerboard, the other around a bow, a lovely and serene face. A satin lavender robe, the bright daylight of a kitchen. The wind playing up the waves of white-blond hair, eyes bright with the exhilaration of flying. A white shirt, a sweet apostrophe smile. Sometimes he would end up painting those images, always keep them away in a box at the corner of a drawer.

He was leaning his forehead against the dried canvas. He opened his eyes and saw the face in front of him clearly. For the first time, he saw not his eyes, or his hair, or his cheeks, or his hands, but wholly the person in front of him. All of him. 

"Fuck," Harry whispered, sitting back. 

It was his fifth painting of him. Of Draco. Here, he was simply laughing, the crescent moon dimples in his cheeks, the crinkle of his eyes.

It was jarring, to be falling so naturally for somebody whose life Harry was forced into, who was forced into his. It was jarring, to want somebody who he had once been so sure he would never feel this way for, who he would never be able to have anyway because he could not imagine at all that Draco would want him back. Who Harry was damned to lose for what Draco might learn three years later, all the secrets Harry had kept.


	7. Chapter 7

Half-way through July, Draco collapsed again, and their lives came to another halt once more, only it was in an entirely different way.

It was hazy and fast-paced the first hour—of finding Draco unconscious, carrying him from the floor of the bedroom and onto the bed. He was bleeding out of his nose, and he was so cold. 

This time, Harry forced himself to let go of Draco instead of trying to cast Patronuses that he knew would take forever, and tried to call Healer Francine instead. Only, she wasn't answering, so he called Ron and Hermione, not knowing who else to call, and on Hermione's demand, he gathered him up in his arms and took him right to St. Mungos.

Healer Francine, it turned out, was dealing with another emergency patient, so they had to get another Healer. 

He was told to stay with Draco in the room, to maintain contact, so he did. So he slid in behind him, settled him back carefully against his chest. So he pushed his fingers between the spaces of Draco's, held the pointed, delicate knuckles of his other hand, firm over Draco's abdomen. He was explaining to this Healer as much of the situation as possible, as much as he could, through the fog overtaking his brain, whilst Draco was being examined.

Harry couldn't keep his eyes off of him, his head craned to see him. He could only see his closed eyes, the lashes resting against the glimpse of a pale cheek, his head tilted against Harry's shoulder. His heart was pounding in his sternum, against Draco's back, and he was silent, painfully still in his fear. The Healer was casting several spells, and then one more that Harry couldn't recall the incantation of. This, she had done so with a hand flat on Draco's chest.

When she told him what was happening, Harry felt very much like he was hearing her from the end of a very long tunnel. It was something about his _magical core_ and something about _incineration,_ and then it was a long-winded explanation of what his internal state felt like, and nothing was really making much sense anymore. 

It all reached him at a very vague level, but mostly it was slipping off him like water, and he kept trying to repeat it back to her, _right, so, um… his core, it's_ — _a fraction of it, you said, is burned out and_ — and she kept repeating it back to him all sympathetic and patient. Then, she asked for his hand in a very soft voice, and when he gave it to her only half-aware of anything, she touched it to Draco's sternum, said that spell again, _sentientia core_ , let him sense the disintegration of his core underneath until he could fully string together the entirety of it. She was saying, "Mr. Potter, your husband is very ill. His core is burning out due to high levels of unstable magic — a fraction of it already has — and I'm afraid there isn't much that can be done."

The thing was that bonding curses that worked on something as internal and volatile as emotions could hardly respond much to any external treatments. There was only easing the symptoms that were to follow, only shifting their focus to the quality of life.

There was only that.

"Why… why did this happen?" Harry asked. "I don't understand why this…"

"I'm afraid that's not something I can answer," Healer Francine said, still in that soft, sympathetic voice. "With bonds like these, particularly emotional ones... it's very hard to say."

"Is…" His voice came rough, cracked. "Will he…"

He couldn't say it aloud, but her face was enough of an answer.

He glanced away, nodded. It took him a while to speak again, mouth opening, his mind hazy. "How long — how long does he have then?"

"Again, I can't say for sure, unfortunately. You never can with things like these."

It was supposed to be okay, was what he would think a long minute after she was gone, holding Draco whilst they laid on the bed sideways. He was still reeling, hearing the words echo back in his head from the end of this very long tunnel, still trying to absorb what wasn't sinking in. The only thing that made it any real was this distant, horrible fear gnawing at the pit of his stomach. 

It was supposed to be okay because _they_ were okay, but nothing was making sense anymore. This curse didn't make sense, and why this had happened didn't make sense, and no Healer or Cursebreaker could say much about anything when it came to curses like these, when everything was so ambiguous, and so Harry was left with a harrowing confusion and no explanation and nothing to tell Draco except that —

Harry swallowed hard, closed his eyes. It was like he was trying to take in too much, yet at the same time, nothing was reaching him at all. Everything was warped and twisted and he didn't know what they were meant to do anymore to stop this from happening, what they weren't. His head hurt, trying to sort through it all, until he was almost half asleep curled around Draco, mouth pressed to the top of his spine and the expanse of his back flush against Harry's chest, knees behind the curl of Draco's knees. 

In the haze of dawn, Harry woke up to movement stirring up against his chest. He sobered up instant and wide-awake, his mind still full of everything that wasn't getting through to him. He pushed himself up quickly onto a shoulder as a hand moved back from Draco's belly, up onto his waist, trying to see him. He still had his eyes closed, brows furrowed. A moment later, he opened them, lit under the fade of sunrise, scarlet-circled. He turned a little in the circle of his arms, finding Harry's own eyes.

"Hi," Harry said, swallowed, and it was awful, the way his voice came out. 

Draco didn't say anything, and it occurred to Harry only then that he was bemused by the unfamiliar way they were laid together, so very intimate. So Harry let go of him, carefully maneuvering his arm out from under him, rustling sheets as he did.

"How do you feel?" Harry asked, almost a hoarse whisper, as if trying not to hurt him with his voice, or perhaps himself by speaking too loud.

Draco didn't answer that. "What —?" He blinked, hard and fast, looking around at a room he couldn't recognise. "What happened?"

"I found you unconscious, is what happened." Harry's lips were parted, working around things he couldn't say. He could feel himself stalling, unable to pull the words of what he'd learned last night. "What… what do you remember?"

Draco frowned, swallowed. "Getting dizzy and cold," he said. "Falling."

There came a lapse in silence that came after Draco's response, and Draco was looking at him, their faces a feet apart. There must have been something on Harry's, because he then croaked, "What?"

For a moment, Harry didn't know if this was something he should tell him, because maybe this would bring them right back to what Xavier had been trying to avoid, and maybe Draco could still be saved. Maybe they could both do better this time, and reverse it all back.

But then the weight of his past secrets leadened his heart, and he only felt sick with himself instead, for even wondering if he shouldn't say anything. He hadn't been saying anything for a long time, and it had led them here anyway.

So Harry told him all of it, about the curse, the way it was incinerating through him. His voice was raspy and scratchy as he did, throat dry from disuse, and still, he felt outside of himself, hearing himself tell it all to Draco.

"Oh," Draco said, strained, swallowed hard again, once, twice. His eyes were going everywhere, blinking fast. There was a tremor of something running through his face. "Oh."

"It doesn't make sense..." Harry whispered to him, staring at his profile. "It doesn't make any sense… why this happened."

Draco didn't say anything. Harry didn't know what else to say. There wasn't really anything, maybe, so he just shifted off his shoulder, over onto his back, just laid there next to Draco and stared up at nothing with him, until he told Harry, quietly, that he would like to be alone. Harry stayed for a moment, with only his voice on the tip of his tongue but no words, and then he got up, off the bed, and finally left.

When he got out of the room, Hermione and Ron were sitting there in the waiting chairs, Hermione's head on Ron's shoulder. They stood up when they saw him, and Harry pushed his hands in his pockets and looked down and kept walking. He didn't feel like he'd be able to speak, tell them anything, his brain so fuzzy and heavy and scattered. He saw Hermione try to follow him right as he walked past, Ron taking her hand, heard her saying Harry's name and him murmuring something to her.

There in the cafeteria, he bought himself something to eat. But it was mostly just left sitting cold on the table as he tried to trace back over these last months, trying to remember if there had been any signs of this outside of that day he found Draco unconscious in the kitchen. 

The Healer had said that the symptoms would be fatigue and weakness, magical sensitivity, erratic magic, nosebleeds, nausea, body pain, chills. He couldn't think of anything at first, but then he remembered Draco trying to cast the animation spell, and he remembered Draco looking tired and skipping his classes, and he remembered Draco sometimes seeming to need a minute after flooing in or out of anywhere, and he remembered Draco disappearing into the bathroom in some haste, the back of his hand under his nose, coming back looking strange and troubled.

Draco was moved back home that morning, spending most of the day tired and sleeping in his bed. Their bed. Harry held him close there too, the only thing he knew to do. The pillow that had always been between them was at their feet, bumping against Harry's ankle. Somewhere on the edge of sleep, he wondered if there was any space left anymore for all this distance between them.

Was this distance the reason why Draco wasn't able to tell him?

How could Harry have been so blind?

Ron was the one that came in, brought them lunch. He stood on the side looking uncomfortable for a moment, before placing the plate down on the nightstand. It was light — just sandwiches, his own special recipe. He looked like he wanted to say something, but didn't know what. Harry was thinking if he should sit up, let go of Draco, except that didn't feel right either, and it felt like his only comfort, the only grounding he had.

Still, he had to come down at some point, when his body began to grow too sore and stiff from being in the same position half the day. Ron and Hermione were sitting in his kitchen, talking softly amongst themselves, quieting upon seeing Harry in the kitchen.

They didn't say anything, when he sat down with them, and Harry was grateful. They waited and let him speak when he was ready.

In the evening, he tried to reach Xavier through the international firecall. He couldn't be reached. He tried to breathe through the turmoil of his emotions, to stay calm, but he ended up upending the table and rattling the bar, several bottles shattering to the ground, with the force of an erratic magic and anger. Then he breathed harder, his chest heaving, staring wild-eyed at the mess he'd made.

He fixed up the room when he steadied, and called Bill.

But there wasn't much Bill knew either. There wasn't much anybody knew about this damned curse.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It was strange that everything else of their lives should stay the same after what they had come home from yesterday.

There was this layer over the way Harry now saw everything around him, that made the world and his house and his own body look strange and not quite his own. He had felt the heat of Draco's core burning out and suddenly nothing felt right anymore.

It was an underlying thing, more than anything. Even Draco would have seemed almost entirely the same as of now, if only that Harry saw more clearly all the things he had missed before, the reduced energy that had made Draco miss his classes, and the mild quiver of pain passing through his face whenever he used the floo, and how it took him a few tries to cast any of the more complicated spells. There were other things, like how he ate relatively less now. Like how he would be leaving the house in his coat and gloves, wore something thick even in July.

He couldn't seem to stand Harry anymore.

The first few days, Draco closed himself away as much as he could in his potions lab, adamant about keeping Harry at a distance, even when the curse would act up for the two of them. Even when he'd be bleeding out of his nose and into his collar, or be trembling with pain against a wall, sweaty and jaw clenched, he would shove him away when Harry reached for him, grinding out, _for Merlin's sake, just let me—_

"Keep your hands off of me," Draco hissed through clenched teeth, eyes red-rimmed. "I don't need anything from you."

"Malfoy _—_ " Harry said, shivering through his teeth, all clammy and sick himself from the curse.

"Just go," Draco said, his voice thick and quivering, pointing a shaky arm out the door. He set his jaw. "Get out."

Harry didn't leave, just stood there, aching. "You're only hurting both of us."

"Get out!" Draco bellowed, a raw and hoarse edge to his voice.

He was as terrified and hurt about it all as he was angry, that much Harry saw, in the moments his face was bare from the pain and fear. 

He did finally give in at the end, sweaty and gasping and feverish, pulling at Harry as he trembled and put his forehead to his shoulder and let him touch him, Harry whispering soothing nonsense into his hairline, _it's alright, you're alright_ and _I'm here, I'm right here, I'll take care of you,_ full of his own desperate fear and guilt and _—_

But once it was over and most of it had calmed, Draco pushed him away again, his breaths just a little short of steady, all hollow-eyed anger and exhaustion afterwards.

Sometimes it felt like he hated Harry from every fibre of his being all over again, and maybe it was because he blamed Harry for it, and maybe it was right, because Draco might have sat in that office and signed the contract for the alteration, but it was Harry who brought it to him, who pushed it onto him even when he kept saying he wasn't certain about it, who didn't do enough to keep him safe from what had happened to him, and now he was sick. Now he was angry and terrified and hurting.

It hurt, seeing him like that, knowing it was his own fault. It hurt in a way it never had in all their years together, to have him so angry at him, to know that Harry deserved it. But it hardly mattered how it hurt, and how the curse left him cold and aching and uncomfortable these days, when he looked at Draco.

It seemed that these days, all Harry did was look at him, at breakfast from over the rim of his cup while taking a sip, from under the bow of his head over the plate at dinner, quiet in the doorway sometimes as Draco stared into middle distance, drinking just enough to seem a little more distantly calmer, from the rug of Andromeda's drawing room as Draco watched Teddy, gave him half-smiles that wore at the edges and spoke to him in too low of a voice, brushed a hand over Teddy's curls and seemed lost in thought around him. 

"I hope they'll tell you about me," was what Harry heard Draco murmur once, just between him and Teddy, as he was coming into the room. "If nothing else, I hope they'll tell you that I loved you very much."

Harry didn't say anything when he did come in, pretending he heard nothing.

Over the rest of the month, it became clear that Draco had no faith or hope in surviving at the end of this. He lived like he was dying. He quit his potions mastery classes. He had started to get all his financials in order, had arranged to write his will sometime in the future. He spent copious amounts of time with his mother and Andromeda and Teddy, wrote a lot of owls to Luna, and Harry tried not to let his heart grow heavy at the thought that Harry was not among these people, that he was, in fact, the last person Draco wanted to be around. He understood well why he wasn't.

It was as if he believed he could demand of the bond that they did not need each other, take his life back from it. Still, Draco was smarter than he was angry and terrified and hurting, and it didn't take him all too long to realise that physically pushing him away was hardly worth the trouble. So now they stood whenever needed with their hands on each other, in his stony quiet, cold grey eyes always fixated past Harry.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Harry leaned himself against the doorway, folding his arms over his chest. He was watching Draco bustle around in his lab, working on whatever it was he was working on these days. He never answered Harry when he asked, trying to talk to him, shamefully desperate for him to. 

"I, uh. I sold my shop."

He didn't feel much about it. Maybe it meant he never had. Maybe he just never felt much about anything anymore. 

Draco's movements faltered at that, and then he continued, searching through a cabinet of some ingredients. It was full of strangely shaped things, colourful liquids, bags of herbs or plants, jars of internal organs or body parts of some creatures. A fang here, a claw there. A small heart. "I didn't ask you to do that," he said, indifferent.

"I know," Harry said, eyes following him as he moved over to his table full of apparatus, glass beakers and tubes and vials. In the centre, a cauldron was set on top of a burner.

Draco was looking over the mess on his table, settling on a holder full of vials. He picked out one full of something faded and prussian blue. 

How long had he felt it coming, Harry wondered. Draco must have known something was wrong, for a long time now. He was too smart not to. 

"We can't keep going like this anymore," Harry said, quieter. "This, not working together. Not talking to each other about important things."

What did he think was happening to him? Why did he think it was _only_ happening to him?

Did he know it had something to do with the alteration that Harry forced him into? 

Was that why he was so angry at him, because he knew that it was Harry's fault?

Draco made a sort of noise, a scoff that jounced in his chest. "See, I don't believe we're much capable of working any other way, Potter," he said, poured the vial into a beaker, sounding half-distracted and insouciant. Something lilac bubbled up to the top. "We were two of the worst people this curse could have happened to."

"Maybe we can still fix this." Harry unfolded his arms, rounded the counters, a hand coming to rest on the top as he came to a stop next to him. He was facing ahead of him, Harry facing him, and he must look as desperate as he feels. "Maybe we could do it better this time, and reverse it _—_ " _Maybe I could_ , because wasn't it him that ruined it all? 

"Shall we fall in love this time then?" Draco said, and looked him in the eyes, making it so clear how absurd he found the concept to be.

Harry swallowed, eyes roving over his steady, fronded silver gaze, fixed on his own, trying not to look at that unmoving mouth. His heart was kicking up a storm, an incomprehensible din, was falling to his feet. His voice came a little forced, strained, "You said it yourself. We don't need to be in love. We just need to be good to each other."

Draco made that same little scoffing noise. He turned away fully, then, back to clinking things, pouring things from one place to another. He added some shapeless lump, that Harry couldn't tell whether it was stone or wood, to the beaker, upturned it into his cauldron once it dissolved. Harry's mind fixed on the line of that lovely jaw. "We won't even call each other by name."

"Then let's start now. If you want that."

Draco's eyes flicked up at him, all icy grey. "I don't want anything from you."

Harry closed his eyes, breathed, slow, with all the roiling desperation of a man trying to breathe underwater. His hand was a tight fist over the counter. "I know you blame me and you're angry and it's difficult and I'm sorry, but will you please just let me _—_ " He breathed again, hadn't entirely thought through what he wanted to say. _Please just let me take care of you_ , was what came to mind, _tell me what you need and I'll give you anything._

Draco put something down on the table, deliberately calm, turning to him. "What will you be doing exactly, Potter? Cuddling me back to health? Or perhaps we just fuck through all hours of the day?" He stared at Harry, unwavering, for a long moment. In a lower voice, "How long? We still have nearly two decades ahead of us, do we not. So how long?"

 _As long as we can,_ Harry wanted to say, only it sounded like something Draco would only laugh at right now, call him a fool for. Only Harry didn't know anything about anything anymore, because he hadn't expected what had happened to happen, and everything was so off-kilter and out of his control and understanding that he felt like he was constantly caught in a freefall, not knowing where anything was going, what would happen to them, to Draco _—_ when they would hit the ground, and hit it hard.

Harry didn't know what to say. He always tried not to think about the time ahead of them, before they could be freed from the curse, but three more years was far more bearable to think about than twenty. His Mind-Healer had told him to take it one day at a time, to try to stay in the present, when the thought of the future ahead would be so overwhelming, and to try all that he could in order to keep himself in the best mental shape as he could. It wasn't the most comforting or helpful, but it was about all she could say, he supposed, for the kind of predicament he was in.

When Harry looked up, blinking his focus back into the present, he found that Draco was eying him, must have been for a while.

"I suppose I'll be out of your life very soon," he said, quietly, repeating back his own words to him. Harry's throat went tight. He turned away, traced the rim of a container, watching his finger. He shrugged, and still quiet, "Too bad I'll be taking your magic with me." There was a slight, hollow smirk at his mouth, when he looked back up. 

He was trying to hurt him. He knew that was what he was doing. Harry swallowed, once, twice, closing his eyes again, until he felt like he could open them again without losing his composure.

"Did you think," Draco said, still that quietly mocking voice. "that you would die too? No. Aren't you fortunate?"

Harry couldn't speak, his eyes following Draco when he walked past him. He watched him ignore him for a moment in favour of continuing his work, his back to him, and then Harry turned and headed for the door, leaving the room.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Narcissa visited them one morning.

"Draco's upstairs," Harry said. "I'll just go and _—_ "

"I'll wait, Mr. Potter," Narcissa said, her hands folded gracefully at her front. "And there is in fact something I'd like to speak with you about."

"Harry, um," Harry said. "You can...just call me by my name, really." They haven't talked much throughout the last two years, ever since the curse had happened, but Harry did find it rather strange for her to be addressing him so formally even now.

Narcissa tipped her head, all slow and subtle grace. "Harry," she said, and twitched a polite smile. 

She followed him to the couch.

"Would you like anything? Water? Tea?"

"Tea would be fine, thank you."

He heated the kettle full of boiling water in the kitchen, made her tea as she liked it, and sat down on the sofa, handing it to her.

"Thank you," she said, taking it from him. She took a sip, a few seconds' pause. 

"What did you want to talk about?"

"Yes. Do you know what's happening with Draco?" Narcissa asked, cutting right to the point.

She didn't know.

Draco hadn't told her.

"He seems rather…" Narcissa continued, paused as if in search for an appropriate word, settled on, "strange... these days."

"Does he?" Harry asked, not quite knowing what to say.

"I was wondering if it was something related to…" She cleared his throat. "To the curse?"

"I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure what we're talking about here."

Narcissa eyed him, and then said, "I see." She put her cup down. "He seems tired these days. And fairly troubled as well. I only wondered, seeing as you live together, if you might have known something about it."

The footsteps sounded from the stairs, padding over towards the kitchen, pausing at the doorway of the living room instead. Draco was fitting his watch around his wrist, looking at Narcissa.

"Mother," he said, seeming surprised. She stood, moving towards him, and let him kiss her cheek in greeting. "What brings you here so early?"

"I wanted to discuss some details about the gala."

"Ah, I see." Draco said, stepping back from her, gestured towards the kitchen. "Join us for breakfast then."

They had their breakfast with Narcissa. Harry just quietly ate and listened to their discussion on the details and decorations. Narcissa, having very clearly sensed the odd and tense energy of the kitchen, had taken Draco aside into the corridors and talked to him until he returned irritated and closed off. Even then, as she nodded her byes to Harry towards the end of her visit, he kissed her hair, stepped away with a controlled twist at his mouth, before she left through the floo.

"You didn't tell her," Harry said. Draco ignored him, spinning with a step of each foot and walking towards the exit. Harry followed after him. "Did you tell anybody at all?"

"Aunt Andromeda," Draco said. "Not that it's any of your business."

"They deserve to know," Harry said, moving out of the kitchen with him. "The people that love you."

"They don't need to know yet," Draco said. "They'd do me much better treating me the same as they always had."

"You don't think it would hurt them worse, to… to find out too late?"

"I'm rather tired of people getting overly involved in my life," Draco said, whirling abruptly to face him at the foot of the stairs, forcing Harry to stumble to a stop. His gaze was flat on his own. "You have no right to say anything."

Harry couldn't say anything to that. Draco turned, walking up the stairs.

  
  


* * *

  
  


That month, Harry's birthday came around. He skipped the dinner party planned for him at the Burrows, told everybody he couldn't make it, so everybody brought the dinner party to him, flooing into his house one after the other. 

Ron brought in the cake, covered under a bubble charm to save it from the ash and green powder. Molly brought with her a bag full of groceries, hugged Harry tight with a free arm and gave him a kind, wrinkled smile, then made her way over to the kitchen to get started on dinner. There was Hermione after her, smiling as she kissed his cheek, not able to do much else with her hands full of gift-wrapped boxes, and then Ginny came through, and George, and Luna, and Andromeda with Teddy, the rest of them also with a handful of everybody's presents, piling them onto the coffee table for the time being.

Draco had seemed caught on getting up and leaving, but ended up staying when he saw Luna, Andromeda and Teddy come through the floo. 

Harry had a nice time, but there was something much lower in energy this time, lesser in the ferocity of joy and celebration and chaos, as if he was bringing down everybody's mood with him, which made him feel guilty. He seemed to have a lot of that these days.

He didn't bother running around much for their birthday tradition, so George caught him too easily, and Ron was feeble and awkward when he wiped a handful of cake down his face, clearly seeing Harry wasn't much in the mood.

"You alright?" he asked, settling an arm around Hermione beside him. They'd gathered in chairs by the fireplace, after Harry had casted the cleaning charms on his face.

"Yeah," Harry said, trying to smile, though it felt strange on his face. "Alright. Just tired."

"How is he?" Hermione asked.

"Draco's okay right now. As okay as he can be, I suppose." For a moment they seemed carefully unsurprised, and Harry didn't understand why until he went back over what he said. He cleared his throat, looking down at his hands. "He won't even look at me."

"Because he's angry about the alteration thing?" Ron asked. "Look, I get that it went bad for him, and it's awful, but it's not like you were the _—_ "

"Ron," Harry said, and Ron stopped. He didn't want to hear that, anybody taking his side, trying to make him feel better. "It was my fault."

"You did it to save us," Ron said, in a low voice. "You can't blame yourself for wanting to be free."

They watched Luna sidle up against Ginny, laying her head on her shoulder, George carrying Teddy on his shoulders to stand at the doorway of the kitchen, where a muffled conversation was taking place.

"Draco said my magic would go away," Harry said, not quite sure why he did. It seemed a strange thing to imagine, a distant idea that he couldn't entirely grasp, like most things now. He hadn't been able to entirely grasp the war happening, and this curse happening, and now he couldn't entirely grasp Draco dying, his magic going away. Like it was all too big for his mind to take in.

Hermione frowned. "I don't think that's right, Harry."

Harry looked at her. "What do you mean?"

Hermione swallowed. "Well. He's… um. He's the primary source. Do you remember that? So… so if…"

She didn't finish it, but Harry understood. What he did not understand was whether Draco had made a mistake, or that he lied, and if he did lie, the reason for it. But Harry already knew that he would let Draco keep his secrets, if that was what it was. Harry had many of his own.

They sat quietly with him and watched the rest of the party. Draco must be with Andromeda and Molly in the kitchen. Even at Andromeda's, he often helped her clean up after dinner alongside Harry. He thought about joining them, because it felt strange, that Draco was sick and cleaning up kitchens, that Harry wasn't doing anything at all. But he doubted Draco could stand to be in the same room as him anymore.

About a half an hour later was the dance party. A favourite song of theirs came on, and Ron pulled him up by the arm, Hermione by the hand, drummed on the coffee table to declare _—_

"A threesome dance!"

Hermione smacked him on the arm, blushing. "Ronald, I told you not to call it that! We should just call it the trio dance _—_ "

"Ah, come on, 'Mione, that's _boring—_ "

Harry moved a little half-heartedly to their pulling _—_ one of Ron and Hermione's hands around each of his own _—_ onto the makeshift dance floor of the living room, but soon he was laughing, shaking his head, letting all their goofy spinning and dancing make him forget for a moment.

Then came the presents, most of them without name. He was to guess who brought what. Somebody had bought him a globe with a small him inside of it, which seemed a bit like a joke. This had to be George or Ginny. It turned out to be George, but it turned out that everytime he shook it, somebody else appeared alongside him, until the globe was all full of little Weasleys and Luna and Neville and Hermione. He smiled down at it, soft, putting it aside. He thought, privately, that there was somebody missing in it. 

Somebody else had gotten him a stack of novels. Hermione, he guessed, very easily. Somebody else had gotten him a set of glasses full of beautiful, intricate patterns and a bottle of wine. Somebody else had gotten him a nice, branded pair of shoes. A piece of wall art and decor. A fancy box of art supplies.

It was way too much for Harry, overwhelming to have people spend so much for him. His nineteenth birthday was the first of these celebratory parties, since he was out of Hogwarts, no longer living with the Dursleys, and they had piled on the presents even more so when they didn't need to send everything by owl anymore. At twenty-one now, this was still the case.

"This is too much, guys, I don't know if I _—_ " Harry was saying, hands up, yet another box between his knees, but somebody threw a ball of gift wrapper at his face, and Ginny told him to shut up. 

The camera was a gift from Luna. It was silver, seemed like the latest model, and must have cost way too much. He waited after all the presents were opened to take her aside.

"Um. Thank you, really," he said, awkwardly, holding it up for her. "But I don't know if I can… it's too expensive, Luna. I'm really the last person you should be spending that much money on."

"You've never learned to accept nice things, have you, Harry?" She smiled slightly. "You don't have to worry. I've been saving. I'm earning quite well. And you'd make me happy if you kept it."

"I'm not even much into photography," Harry said, staring down at it as he rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't…. Sorry, I really sound ungrateful, don't I. It's really great, but I just mean…"

"You don't need to be a photographer for it," Luna said, when he trailed off, not knowing what else to say. She took his hand and smiled. "You can just use it for anything you find beautiful. Anything you'll want to remember and look back on later. It would be like keeping a piece of them with you."

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

One evening, Draco came striding out of the floo and into the drawing room, heading straight towards the bar at a clipped pace. He was fuming, clearly, hands shaking as he poured himself a drink.

"Alright?" Harry asked, and was very conscious of what was on his canvas—the incomplete half-way profile of a face, turned just so over a shoulder, and the strokes of burgundy at the very bottom of the canvas. There was the outline of hair still uncoloured, swept up into a half-up, the half down loose over the nape of a neck, tucked over an ear but for a swirling tendril. A moment in motion stilled into a painting.

Draco didn't respond, just threw back a whole glass of whiskey. Harry stood up to his feet, subtly tilting his canvas further away.

"Draco, hey," Harry said, had made his way over to him. He was reaching for him, hand hovering over his arm. They'd done the necessitated contact only about an hour ago, before he went to see Narcissa, but Harry no longer expected anything predictable. "Is it—"

"Fuck!" Draco hurled his glass far off to the side, which was followed by the violent sound of shattering and clinking. He leaned forward onto both his hands, head bowed between his shoulders. He was breathing hard, only lower teeth visible. His eyes were closed, face flushed. "That bastard!" he bellowed, slamming a hand down on the bar.

"What happened?" Harry asked, not entirely sure if he was heard under Draco's harsh breaths, though he was sure that even if he was, Draco would only ignore him.

But he didn't, perhaps too consumed by whatever was troubling him so much. "He—he humiliated her—he spat on—" Draco could hardly speak, shuddering with the quiver of his chin. Harry resisted the urge to soothe it away with his hands, hold him close to his shoulder. "He called my mother a—"

He could only gather that somebody had disparaged and humiliated Narcissa whilst she was out somewhere, had spat on her and called her something awful. 

"Was it…" Harry said, the sickening burn in his chest making his voice a rough, uneven rasp. He took a second to let that settle, speak again when he sounded more controlled. He tilted his head slightly down and closer, wanting to see Draco's face. "Was it somebody you knew?"

_Who was it that made you look like that?_

Draco was staring down at the bar, his chest heaving, as if trying to collect himself, pondering on something intensely. Harry thought he would ignore him, once more, but he shook his head after a while, still frowning.

"I'm sorry," Harry said.

Draco blinked, hard and fast, and then he was gritting his teeth, turning swiftly past Harry and pacing back and forth, furiously declaring that —

"No bastard should ever look at her wrong again, and I _will_ not leave this godsforsaken world until I have ensured that and — and so _help_ me, Potter, you _will_ accompany me to the latest gala my organisation will be hosting." He had halted to a stop, abrupt as he whirled back on him, wild-eyed and manic. "Do you understand? No, you do not owe me, but you certainly owe _her_ your life, and she may consider herself too dignified for it but today I say it is finally time to invoke—" But then he clamped his upper lip over his lower lip, tight, as if in restraint, looking away. He breathed, slowly, and spoke again only when he was calmer, "She had no part in any of… Surely you agree that—that she deserves better than this. _Surely—_ "

"Okay," Harry said, cutting him off, Draco's voice fading. "Okay. What do you need me to do?"

Draco's mouth closed, taken aback as he stared at him, as if he hadn't expected such easy acceptance. Then, a moment after, he looked away, the movement of his chest still a bit irregular.

"Right. Well." He cleared his throat. He let his hands fall to his sides, moving towards Harry. "Well, I will need you to do whatever you can, as much as you can, to show people that you are amicable and fond of Mother and _—_ and _—_ " He trailed off there, and his jaw worked, eyes drifting away. "I'm sure we can use our... predicament… to our advantage, in this case."

Some people would not be happy to see Harry happy with Draco Malfoy, but there was a chance that others would be influenced by the sight of them happy together. For others, there would still be doubts. For some, should any hatred befall Draco further after this, it would likely be for a far different reason that would have nothing at all to do with Narcissa, or essentially, the Malfoys in general; jealousy. Either way, it might stave off at least some of the negativity surrounding them to have Harry publicly endorsing them.

"So, for Merlin's sake, could you at least try to keep your damned wits about you this time? Just for one night?" 

Harry remembered the ball party from last year, that he'd been forced to tag along with. Draco never asked him to come to such functions after that, always just came home earlier.

"I will," Harry said to him, quietly.

Draco stared at him, still seemed to be breathing a bit high and shallow in his chest. He nodded. "Alright. Good. That is…"

"Yeah," Harry said.

Around mid-August came the day of the gala, the venue of which was to be Malfoy Manor. Harry was made the guest of honour, and an auction would be held to buy two hours of Harry's time. 

Draco had bought the robes for Harry, a deep blue, silken robe with intricate golden patterns woven at the borders, the sleeves. He taught Harry a charm that could style his hair best, bring it under a bit of control, so that it looked deliberate and artful. 

Half-way through the explanation, he was trying to demonstrate it by casting it on Harry, but his magic fizzed out, and he went quiet, his wand held still in his hand.

"What, like this?" Harry said, after a few seconds of silence, of Draco's crestfallen face. He tried to cast the spell on himself, but it was only a breeze that puffed up the front of his curls, making it flop back onto his temples. 

"No," Draco said, his face going exasperated in an instant. "That is most certainly not _—_ Your wand movements are all way off, Potter, and only Salazar knows what you just said right now because your pronunciation was entirely incorrect. It's not _stilius_ , for Merlin's sake, it's _stilus_! _Stilus mea capillus_ _—_ " 

And on he went for a good three minutes, in that haughty and frustrated tone he'd been using the entire time he was teaching Harry all the spells he needed to look 'presentable and not like your horrid barbaric self', brushing quick fingers through the front of Harry's hair in an attempt to straighten it enough before the spell could do the rest. 

Harry was watching him with a small quirk at one corner of his lips, roving over his face. Draco was so focused on fixing him up that he didn't notice it, and he let himself almost forget, for this moment, how he had ruined him and how angry Draco was for it.

Afterwards, Draco had left a bit earlier for some last-minute tasks to touch up on.

When Harry showed up to the gala that evening, it was to a whole host of flashbulbs from metres away, the reporters held back by a transparent barrier. He could only see dark spots and nothing else, blinking hard as he turned and made his way towards the entrance, the loud, distorted chorus of people yelling and speaking over each other from behind him. 

His steps faltered when he saw him, always the first thing he looked for these days.

He was standing there by the door, all velvet robes and wavy hair twisted up into a low plaited bun at the back of his neck, white-blond swirls falling over his temples. Two lines of braids crowned his head, the cross of each one dotted with a miniscule, beaded glow, like fairy lights all throughout. He was smiling as he was conversing with somebody, all crescent-moons in his cheeks, a crinkle in his eyes.

He made his way over to them, trying to push down the swollen throb of his heart jumping up into his throat. Draco's eyes caught his mid-conversation, and the linger of a laugh on his face faded slightly. 

Harry came to a stop in front of Narcissa, who was turning towards him, saying, "Harry." They were both tearing their eyes away, looking at her. 

He kissed the back of her hand in greeting, as in the customary greeting to show utmost respect and affection for a lady, and rose to a straightening of his back, smiling up at her as he did.

His eyes landed beside her, on her son.

In the blur of a world tuning out of his senses, the hushed chorus of sound around them, he found himself saying, softly, "You look beautiful."

"Thank you," Draco said, just as quiet. His eyes drifted slightly towards the people around them, just within hearing range.

He let Harry step up closer to him, press a kiss to his cheek. Behind him, the flashbulbs went wild, the crowd louder. 

For an act, it was the easiest thing, to hold his arm out for him, and smile broadly at him, and have him move up next to him, sidle up against his side. He was watching Draco hook his arm through it, touch Harry's bicep with a hand, smiling a little back.

The Manor opened to them as a vast hall full of golden lights, a chandelier in the very centre of the ceiling and bright-lit sconces beside auburn curtains. There were people everywhere, the hubbub of chorus and chatter slowing, the heads turning, as they watched the two of them walk through the room.

The gala was all drinks and talking and dancing. Harry had a table at the corner, where everybody came to talk to the guest of honour. While Draco was hosting and going around checking on people, conversing with them and charming them with his close attention and easy laughter, Harry was in the company of a man who went on a long-winded story about the amount of money he had made over the years, how he made it, and how he started. Harry was nodding politely along to it, forcing interjections, not entirely certain of what else to say.

At some point Harry's eyes met with Draco's over the man's head, still nodding even though he was hardly hearing anything, desperately trying to be polite. He didn't know what he looked like, but even in his anger, Draco seemed to find it amusing, a tremor of a smirk playing at a corner of his mouth as he quickly broke the gaze, paying intent attention to the man speaking to him.

He came later, with a hand to Harry's shoulder as he settled on a chair beside him. He was sitting very close to him, kept his hand lingering on Harry, smiling in that slanted way he did, with one corner of his mouth quirked more than the other, saying, "Mr. Naborowski, what a pleasure to see you here."

Draco took over all the further conversations to Harry's relief. He was asking all the questions for Naborowski, letting him speak about himself, adding a bit of general points here and there or personal opinions about the topic at hand.

"I must say, Mr. Malfoy," Naborowski was saying at one point. "I would never have, in a million years, expected for the two of you to make this work."

Draco tensed slightly against him, though his face stayed very much maintained on the smile. He glanced at Harry, quick, quicker to look away. "It wasn't quite ideal for either of us at first, as I'm sure you might have heard, but…" He trailed off, and the pause went a little too long, and he seemed a bit nervous. Harry thought, again, of the last time they'd been somewhere like this together, his own shameful lack of control as he'd snapped. The quiver of hurt in Draco's eyes, throwing the papers under Harry's face the next day.

"But it worked out well," Harry said, taking over. He forced himself to look casual, even with remorse thick in his throat, leaning back on the chair and a little more into Draco's hand on his shoulder. Their knees brushed together. He drank from his glass. 

"Well." Naborowski gestured between the two of them. "Who fell in love first?"

Draco faltered again, even though they'd rehearsed every story, every answer.

"I did," Harry said, softly.

The auction came and went, and the highest bidder was a young man, Timothy Foster, who had a habit of interrupting people too much, or so it seemed. Draco would begin to speak, only to be left trailing off as Timothy cut in over him with some comment or the other. By the third time, Draco seemed thoroughly annoyed by this, though he only seemed coldly reposed on the outside, but Harry saw him because he always saw him, always too busy glancing over at him, trying not to, than to be paying attention to the conversation at hand. The lady on the left had noticed by then too, throwing them an apologetic look.

The fourth time had Harry straighten up. "Er, excuse me?" 

He was too quiet at first and had to say it again, louder. The abrupt silence that came over them, and the sudden turn of all the heads in the circle at him, was almost startling. It took him a few seconds to recover from that. 

"Um. I _—_ " He cleared his throat, suddenly felt mortified. He plowed through anyway, trying to be as satisfactorily polite as he could be, because Draco had demanded it _—_ had in fact given him a scroll full of social rules to memorise, and he was rather overwhelmed just remembering reading through that even though he barely remembered half of it anymore. "My husband was speaking. I'd like to listen to what he has to say." 

There was silence. Harry cleared his throat awkwardly, glanced over at Draco to gauge whether he just did something wrong. He had a brow raised, an unfathomable expression, pink-cheeked. His glass hovered near his mouth, and he looked down at the top of it, watching it slosh gently. 

The rest of it was rather uneventful. More talking. More drinking. Some food. Then they were all dancing in the centre of the great hall, all slow and formal and fancy. Harry had a dance with Narcissa, where she engaged him with polite small talk, smiled at him a lot as she spoke, charming and warm in a way he'd never seen her as in his school years. He was asking after her, telling her of what Draco had told him with all the gaps, and then had finally gotten the proper story which wasn't so far off from what he'd gathered.

"I'm sorry," Harry said. "You didn't really deserve that. And it's just… I just wish they would leave the war behind already."

Narcissa was eying him, then smiled softly. "You're too good a man, Harry," she said, and it was genuine, before Draco had come and borrowed her for something. Harry let him have his time with her, moving away into a corner, accepting a drink from one of the servers. A little while after, somebody had come and asked for a dance from Narcissa, and a little while after that, Draco accepted a dance from a woman, black-haired and very conventionally beautiful. A name niggled at the back of Harry's mind, with that face, and he finally placed her as the younger Greengrass sister. 

And Harry was there in the corner, watching Draco through most of it, with his heart painfully tender and heavy and swollen up to his throat. The drink in his glass had taken just enough of the edge off, had made the sconce lights of the room brighter and warmer, and everything he was trying not to feel was coming closer to him. He was watching Draco just be here, laughing with somebody else, swaying in a dance under the chandeliers, spinning them around. He was watching him break away from the crowd of slow dancing, after a while. He was watching him move over to the fruit bowl on the food table, pick up a red cherry, pulling the stalk out of his mouth with his head low.

"Dance with me?"

Harry looked up to find Timothy. He had his hand held out. 

"Oh, no, thank you. I don't really dance.".

"That's a shame," Timothy said, dropping down to the seat beside him.

Harry tried to keep up with the following conversation, seeing as he was his client, and he would have to spend two hours with him the week after, but ultimately, he wasn't doing all too well, because small talk was just not his forte.

Timothy smirked, scooting closer. "Do you want to get out of here? There's an empty room upstairs."

It took awhile for the words to sink in, so bewildered he was. "I'm… I'm married. If you forgot that." 

Timothy stared at him, sitting so close to him Harry could smell the alcohol on his breath. He scoffed. "Yeah, involuntarily to _Draco Malfoy_. What's he got on you to make you act like you actually give a damn about him?"

Harry stared at him, giving him his best _what the fuck_ look. "He hasn't _got anything_ on me."

"Come on. I've been following the news. Just a few months ago you were saying you'd never marry somebody like him _—_ who would, really? And now here you are, acting like you're all about him?"

Harry was looking at Draco. Draco was looking at him across the room, looking away and down at his drink, seeming a bit distracted. He kept looking at the person talking, but didn't entirely seem to be there, and worry curdled at Harry. "Yeah. See, things can change."

"You don't actually like a Death-Eater, do you?"

And then Harry forgot all about his social rules. "He's not a Death-Eater anymore," he said, coldly. He stood up, pushing himself away from him. "Now if you'll excuse me _—_ I'm going to go have a dance with the only man I am all about."

Timothy looked very flushed. "I'm a better man than he'll ever be."

"I'll want somebody who's trying to be better over somebody who firmly thinks himself to be any day."

Draco was by the foodtable again when he went to him, alone, drinking out of a flask. His hand was trembling. Harry frowned, moving closer.

"Hey. Draco?" He stepped close, reaching for his elbow. "Maybe we should go _—_ "

"No," Draco said. He tore away from him. "No, I…" He swallowed, looking nauseated. 

"Draco, come on," Harry said, grabbing his wrist and trying to walk him along.

"No, for Salazar's _—_ " Draco jerked his hand out of his grip. "I am the bloody host. I can't just up and leave! What would people think?"

"What would people _—_ You're getting sick, for Merlin's sake. Fuck what they would think _—_ " Harry reached for him again.

"Don't touch me."

Harry eyed him, swallowing. Draco shouldered past him. 

He tried to get Draco to come with him once more by trying to take him away from a whole gathering of people with a, "excuse me, may I borrow him for a minute, please?" Once again when Draco was alone again, hands trembling around the food table. Once again, pulling him away for a dance to Draco's exasperation. He danced with Harry for all of five minutes before sliding away from him to see to every other matter. Harry tried to stay with him for the rest of it, putting a hand to his back, pulling him close by the waist, trying to get _something_ across between them.

It wasn't enough. In the end, Draco did collapse. He'd excused himself and stumbled over to the staircase, a hand on his head, the other on the decorative dome of the stair railing. Harry had followed him right at his heels, caught him by the inside of his knees and his back and jostled him up into his arms before he could fall. All the hubbub slowed, the room falling silent. Harry met Narcissa's eyes in the distance, but she didn't move from where she stood, only swallowed, frowning, a stressed line of fear between her brows. Even so, she let him take care of it.

"Two doors down, to the left," she said, in the near-echo of the baffled silence.

Harry turned and carried him up the stairs, with the burn of the crowd at his back, watching it all.

  
  


* * *

  
  


In the journey from the stairs up to what must be Draco's old bedroom, some of the fear had begun to melt into a kind of anger as well.

Still, his hands were trembling, and still, they were gentle when Harry laid him down on the bed, one knee on the edge of it, supporting his head in the very last of the lowering. His head came very close to the hollow of Draco's neck. 

He was awake, when Harry raised his head, though he seemed only on the verge of it. He felt his eyes on him through every step, through the tug of his tucked shirttails off his waistband, the palm he curled at his waist, through the one-handed unclasping at the neck of his heavily embroidered robe. Harry didn't speak, with the anger and wild panic swelling in his chest, and did so only when he was wrestling his robes off his shoulders.

"You can't play with your life like that, for Merlin's _—_ " But the weight in his throat broke him off, his eyes beginning to burn, not quite certain of where the reasons for it ended, if it was really about the way the night had gone. If it was about something much more.

"Sorry," Draco said, hoarse. "I thought I could just—"

For the entire silence that followed, Harry didn't look at him, too busy trying to keep that burn in his eyes behind them, blinking hard.

"You called me your husband."

Harry finally managed to pull the heavy robe off his shoulder and arm, tugging a little. "So?"

"So, nothing," Draco said, quietly. He cleared his throat, shifted to let him take his robes off his back. "It was — was just strange to hear. That's all."

There was nothing after that. There was just the sound of rustling clothes, when he took off his own robes, and the sheets when Harry laid down behind him on the bed. He slid an arm around him, scooted up close to his back, feeling the clarity of his body and heat through his shirt, reflecting back to himself. 

"Looking forward to your date next week?" Draco asked, soft and drowsy.

"I wouldn't call it a date. And not really," Harry said. "Bit of a piece of work."

Draco was silent, and then he hummed, even softer. His breathing fell deep, slowing a moment after, having fallen asleep. Harry pressed his mouth to the space between his shoulder blades, not quite a kiss, but wanting it to be.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Draco slept through the morning. Harry only got up for his basic necessities, going to the loo and brushing his teeth, before he was back against him, lost in thoughts. 

He breathed, tried to turn a little, his body sore and stiff. His head hurt, strained by the effort to recount the last two years, that felt like two decades all on their own some days. He settled back against Draco's back, the warmth that was only his body's. It was strange, how comfortable he'd grown with it, how well he knew it.

He knew that Draco had a mole at the side of his throat, that he had a birthmark on his hip, and he was sensitive on his neck, and his abdomen, the dips of dimples at his lower back, the inside of his knees. He had a greyed Dark Mark, with so many glamours on it that the skin there looked bright. He had scars, the terrible ones Harry had given him, but he hid them too. Harry wondered, vaguely, what it was that made him turn out the lights until he came back one day without them. Had he interpreted whatever Harry must have looked like as a face of disgust?

In the noon, Narcissa sent breakfast up via a house elf. Draco still hadn't woken by then.

When Harry went downstairs, Narcissa was in the kitchen, drinking her tea. It was an entirely contrasting dining table set from the ancient, gothic furniture she'd previously had in their drawing room, an elegant combination of marble-white and ember brown. He thought of Nagini and didn't have to wonder much why she might have had those thrown out, had all this moved into a different place.

"Harry," she said, quietly, twitched a smile at him. She gestured him in. "Good morning. Come sit." 

Harry obliged, coming to sit on a chair near her. Her eyes were scarlet from exhaustion, a little swollen. She did not look like she slept much. 

"What happened?" Narcissa said. There was something very controlled about the way she sat, moved. She was pouring him tea in another cup. "Last night."

As she slid to him his tea, Harry gave her some story about the curse acting up, Draco not willing to leave the party and settle it down.

"Has this happened before?"

Harry faltered. "Yeah," he said, a while after.

Narcissa nodded, slowly, like there was something she understood. The line of her throat shifted, subtly. "How… how many times?"

"Maybe you should… I think you should talk to—"

"He won't tell me. There is a lot he won't talk about anymore with me, ever since the war." Narcissa smiled, ruefully. "But I've seen this before, Harry."

Harry remembered Draco again, sickly in the firelight the day the curse had happened to both of them, and knew she understood.

"I think he wanted…" Harry said, hoarse. "He just wanted things to stay the same. And maybe he wanted to… save you from…"

She smiled, that thin and wry smile Harry had often seen on the same lips, a different person. "I wonder when exactly he started protecting me instead of the other way around."

Harry kept silent, looking down at the dried brown film atop his tea.

"Mother," Draco's voice came from the doorway. 

Narcissa stood. Harry's head snapped up, back straightening. From the look on his face, Harry could tell he'd been here for a while.

"I didn't mean to…"

"I know." Draco looked at Harry, held him there for a moment. His arms were folded, lounging against the doorframe as he did. His hair was now a muss of a loosened plaited bun and braided crowns, a frizz of stray hairs lit in the daylight, free of the decorative pieces of last night. Even then, he looked unfairly, effortlessly lovely. 

He uncrossed his arms and walked in, sliding a chair closer to his mother. Her face crumpled, terribly, for a second, and he leaned forward to take her into his arms, only she had pulled him in first, a hand on the back of his hair, his nose to her shoulder.

Harry stood up, left them to give them privacy, and stood outside the kitchen full of quiet grief, feeling his own heart weigh down to his feet. He rested his head back against the wall, closed his eyes.

At the fireplace, as the two of them were leaving, Narcissa said to Harry, "Will you take care of him? Will you make sure that he..."

"Of course," Harry said, softly, like a promise.

Narcissa eyed him for a bit, and then smiled, though it didn't quite reach her red-rimmed eyes. Harry didn't know what came over him in that moment, perhaps encouraged by the softening of her face, but he held his hand out for her, slightly tentative. He'd expected, in that second of surprised stillness for her to reject it, but then she gave a small laugh, still a bit thick and watery, as she placed her palm into the upturn of his own. Harry smiled too, eyes crinkling, bowed down and kissed the back of her hand. She smiled back.

Draco was standing next to her, witnessing the exchange. He looked strange, when Harry lifted back into a straighten of his body and saw him. He turned his eyes to his mother, instead, gave her a slight, slanted smile.

They flooed out.

That evening, Draco came in whilst Harry was having a drink, and Harry, surprised, made space for him to sit beside him. Draco had the papers in his hand.

"Well. It didn't entirely go according to plan," he said, tossing it lightly on the table in front of them. "But they did describe us as a 'power couple' and wrote it as 'the happy evening for the lovebirds came to an end'—"

"I can make up something about that, if you want. Maybe have an interview with Xenophillius and—"

"Aren't you helpful," Draco said. Harry looked down at the top of his drink, swallowing hard. A moment after, he said, softer, "Thank you, for the offer. And for doing what you did."

"I'm sorry," Harry blurted, suddenly. The room went silent. A second. Two. "I know it doesn't matter, because it—" But it took the wind out of his lungs and instead he just went silent, throat burning. Still, a few seconds after, with no response from Draco, he breathed and said, "I'm sorry, for pushing the alteration on you."

"Do you think that's what's happened then?" Draco asked, his face controlled. "The alteration?"

"I don't know," Harry said, though maybe he did. Maybe he didn't entirely. It should have been okay, but it wasn't, and Harry just didn't know what had gone wrong. He looked down at his hands. "It's the only thing that makes any sense. I don't know."

"Maybe. Yes. It's… it's the only thing that makes any sense, what little it does," Draco said. "But… if I am honest, I wouldn't have listened to you if I didn't have my own reasons as well."

Harry understood. Draco hadn't wanted him either, and it had made all the sense in the world back then, but now it only hurt to hear aloud.

But it was fair, and he knew it was. Hadn't Harry not wanted him then either? Hadn't he made that very clear as well?

"I think they did something to me," Draco said, quietly. "What I don't understand is why they didn't tell me."

Harry still didn't look at him. "Why… why do you think it's affecting you like this and not me?"

There was a pause, a fairly long one. "That, I don't know." There was the small sound of him swallowing. "It doesn't matter. I'm going to figure it all out."

Harry thought of all the hours Draco spent in his potions lab. Maybe that was what he had been doing all that time, trying to figure this out.

"I hope you do," Harry said, and only then did he look at him, meaning it with all his heart. Draco lifted his head, meeting his eyes.

He wanted Draco to find out what happened to him. He wanted him to know everything that was his to know.

But what he hoped he would never find out was that Harry knew it all long before he did, because that was where the trouble lied, where it would hurt most.

Draco couldn't afford that.

"I've been unkind again," Draco said, after a while, tearing his eyes away from his. "I just wanted to be angry at somebody."

"I think you have every right." 

"Hmm," Draco said, slanting a mild smile. "But I think I've had enough of that, now."

He ended up taking Harry's drink out of his hands, putting his own aside with it on the table. Then, Draco shifted over a leg on the other side of his thighs, putting his fingers at the waistband of Harry's jeans as he asked a quiet, "Yes?"

For a while after Harry's outburst the night of his birthday, Draco had remained amicable with him, just as he'd been the morning after. But he'd always drawn away from him when it came to sex, always refused and said he wasn't in the mood. Harry stopped asking by the third time, because by then he had seen the look on his face, and realised that he wasn't quite over the way Harry had lashed out at him, so out of nowhere, when they'd become friends. 

Harry swallowed around his heart, looking up at him now. Draco's hair was all softly around his eyes, feathered shadows on his face, the sharp line of his throat in firelight. He was so beautiful, and smart, and lovely, and Harry hadn't ever thought it was possible to want somebody with an intensity quite like this, in every sense of the word _wanting_. 

And he hadn't ever thought loving somebody could hurt quite like this. Like a sickening pluck at the strings of his heart, all tender as a bruise.

"Yeah," Harry said, trying not to look like all he wanted in that moment, with a terrible desperation, was to kiss him, to have Draco kiss him back just the same way. "Okay."

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


A week later, Harry came home from his two hours with Timothy. He went looking for Draco and found him by the window in the bedroom, one hand in a trouser pocket as he leaned into the wall sideways, the other around a tumbler, and against it there, the gleam of silver. 

"How was your date?" Draco asked, when he noticed him there, smirked in amusement at whatever Harry must look like. 

"Fun," Harry said, dryly.

Draco stared at him, brows raised.

Harry sighed, made his way over, folded his arms as he slumped himself sideways into the wall opposite him, the space of the window between them. "The only thing he asked me was if I felt great about defeating the Dark Lord, and then he just talked about himself for an hour straight. I think my brain is fried and I don't know anything anymore except 101 facts about Timothy Foster."

Draco hummed, lips bitten back on the edge of a smirk, looking away.

"You cut your hair," Harry said.

"I did. What of it?"

Harry thought of those beads in his hair, like fairy lights, Harry's latest painting of him. He liked his hair now too, just a bit shorter, still easy to tuck behind his ears, but trimmed up to rest just at the top of the nape of his neck. Not that Draco would care about that.

"Nothing," Harry said.

Draco just looked back out the window.

It was a while after, with the two of them in silence, and Harry eying him, that he finally said, "We should go somewhere. Do something."

For a while, there was nothing said, and then, "Like what?" Draco scoffed, a small movement in his chest. "What can we even do with this damned curse on us?"

"Shouldn't be too much of a problem if we're together, right?" Harry said. Draco was still looking out, but his eyes had drifted, as if contemplative. "What do you want? From life?"

For a moment, there was nothing, but for a tilt of his head. He seemed very lost in his own thoughts.

Then, he smirked, slightly, and he looked at Harry. "What do I want?" He pushed himself off the wall, the wine in his glass jostling slightly. "What don't I want?"

Harry was watching him, head cocked.

"Good food. Travel. Experience. Adventure." Every word Draco said was a step closer to Harry, and Harry kept himself very still, eyes following his face. He paused, in front of him, smirked, a flick of his eyes down, up. "Sex," he whispered. "I want it all. And if I could have had love..."

Harry kept himself in check, even as there was a very small part of Harry, wildly wondering, stupidly hoping, if perhaps Draco wanted it with him, if Draco wanted love with _him_ —

He saw Harry's face, huffed, and said in a low voice, "But of course. There are some things you just can't have."

 _There are some things,_ he repeated in thought, looking at Draco quietly, watching him turn his head away, and Harry's gaze, falling to his mouth, _you just can't have._  
  



	9. Chapter 9

Paris was a place Draco had gone often as a child. They booked a room in the wizarding district _,_ somewhere all 18th century themed with elegant decor and style. It was a beautiful room, much too fancy for Harry's comfort, pistachio green walls with intricately patterned, golden borders and curtains. To the right of the massive bed, all neat white sheets and thick covers, a sliding door opened into the balcony, which looked out over the Place Vendome, and further in the distance, the Eiffel Tower.

Their first stop was at an art museum named Musée Marmottan Monet.

"You don't have to stay here," Draco said.

"I'll wait," Harry said.

Draco raised an eyebrow, throwing him a glance. "You'll have to wait a very long time then."

He wasn't lying. He walked by every painting in the gallery and stopped to stare at a few for very long minutes, his eyes roving up and down over them, as if taking in every detail. 

There was one that he stopped and stared at, for the longest time. 

Harry stood a little far behind him, hands pushed into his pockets. He looked at it for a moment, and then at Draco for the rest of it, at the shadowing of his cheekbones under a light above him, the silver of an eye framed by long lashes. He never quite understood what it meant to stay in the entirety of a moment, savour it, but he supposed it must be something like this, like watching Draco lose himself in paintings for ages.

He looked like one too, standing there like that; in his long black coat, the enamored tilt of his head. The grace of his shoulders, with his gloved hands in his coat pockets, and his face soothed with an almost-peace.

It was as Draco was turning, as if with effort to break himself away, that it crept in — the sickeningly fierce urge to stop time where they stood, Draco losing himself in paintings, Harry losing himself in him.

But that was the fact of time. It did not slow or wait for anybody, and whatever it was heading towards, it would get there, and it would get past it, and nobody could have any say in that.

Harry wanted a time turner and stop it all here, or go back to when nothing was like this and he didn't have this fear gnawing at him all the time, when Draco's core was still whole and safe. 

But he couldn't do that. So he wanted to fix him into his mind instead, every fact and detail of him — he wanted to remember even years later what his voice sounded like, and what he laughed like. How he smiled, and stood, and moved, with all the grace and elegance effortlessly ingrained in his body. How he looked when he was losing himself in something. Like moments in motion stilled in paintings. Like moments in motion held tight in a box, that Harry can keep and carry around with him wherever he wanted, for as long as he wanted.

 _You can just use it for anything you find beautiful. Anything you'll want to remember and look back on later_ , Luna had said. Harry just wanted to remember and look back on one beautiful person.

"What's this, Potter?" Draco said, with the jump of a brow. He had a hand under his jaw, looking up at Harry from the tilt of his head into it. "Are you recording me?"

Harry smiled, elbows atop the table, shoulders a little low and rounded as he held the camera. The screen blurred, focused again on Draco's face, on that slight raise of his brow. The morning light, soft and faded, fell on him through the large-panelled café window. "Knut for your thoughts?"

"That Harry Potter must be the most terribly ridiculous person to ever exist."

"Tell me a secret."

"A secret?"

"Anything I don't know."

Their beverages and food came at that point. Harry had to stop the recording.

"I didn't know what divorce was until I was ten," Draco said, a little while after the server had left, as if he'd been thinking of something to say. He was cutting into his breakfast. "I just always assumed the children that spoke of going to their mother or father's at different points of time had two houses, and it was to differentiate."

Harry laughed, brows jumping. "You're joking."

"I had five back then," Draco said, as in an explanation, shrugging. He was flushing slightly. "I thought two had to have been somewhat common." He cleared his throat. "So there you have it, my secret. Now you tell me yours."

Harry told him about the time he accidentally blew up his Aunt Marge. Draco stared at him, slightly wide-eyed. Harry shrugged.

"So what are we doing today?"

And off went Draco's list of adventures for their day, fairly extensive. It included a tour through Canal Saint-Martin, the Versailles Palace, the Notre Dame cathedral, the beautiful bridge of Pont Alexandre III, and many more plans that Harry didn't believe they could fit into a single day.

And they couldn't. Half of the things, they had to save for the next day, because Draco would get so exhausted, even as he would try to push himself through it, or they'd take too long in some places that most of their time and energy would be gone by the end. It seemed Draco was just desperate to experience everything as much as he could, but at the same time, he didn't want to spend too much time not spending it with his mother, with Teddy and Andromeda and Luna. 

Draco must have already come to a few of these places, because he knew a lot about them, and told Harry all about them too. The camera was often kept on, under the pretense of recording videos of the ancient architecture, or the stunning views from a high rooftop, the top of a tower, the edge near a canal with a few boats sailing on the water. He wondered if Draco could tell that it was on him too a lot of the time. Always trying to catch a laugh or a smile of his.

And Harry always liked the way Draco would mindlessly grab for the wrist or sleeve of his free hand, jostle at him to get his attention, pull him along to something he really wanted to see or shop at or go into. He liked the way he would turn around into the camera with the crescent-moons in his cheeks, a crinkle lighting up his eyes, and the wind in his hair playing up as he walked backwards, hands in his coat pockets, and told Harry about an old childhood memory here, a fascinating fact of history there. 

He liked the way the blurry rays of the sun blinked above the wildened waves of white-blond hair on the screen, and then shadowed him where it got covered behind him, his voice only just loud over the hushed roar of weather and sound. 

Their next trip was to Rome, Italy. They travelled in the morning through the Portkey Office, drove by a taxi the rest of the way to their hotel. They went to see the Trevi Fountain, full of coins thrown in the water. _They'll donate this to a church_ , _and the church will use them for the poor families here,_ Draco told him. Then, the Roman Forum, all the ancient, architectural fragments of stone, leaving behind history. In the evening was a visit to the Colosseum, an oval-shaped amphitheatre lit up gold when the sky darkened.

In their hotel room that night, Harry had drunk a bit too much at dinner. On his side of the bed, he was leisuring on his stomach, his elbows on the mattress with a camera between his thumbs and forefingers. He was recording Draco as he was folding up the clothes he'd had back from laundry, his own voice behind it asking, "Would you say I'm the best childhood enemy turned involuntary spouse you've ever had?" None of the words quite came out right, running into each other, all slurry.

"Best out of what? There's only one of you," Draco said, huffing. He spoke a little absently, though he was considerably less drunk than Harry. His head had dipped where he was holding a shirt under his chin, his hands carefully folding it together. 

The next day, Harry was much more sober when he'd stopped at the sight of a flower shop.

 _And If I could have had love..._ Draco had said. 

_There are some things you just can't have._

Maybe it wasn't Harry that he would have wanted to have that with, and buying flowers hardly meant anything, and having them from Harry hardly meant anything, but he still passed the money over to the old lady behind the cart, and took the bouquet of flowers from her hand as he returned her smile. He looked back down at where he was pushing his wallet back into his jeans' pocket. 

When he turned around, it was to Draco watching him from behind, brows knitted in puzzlement. 

Harry held them out, all pink furls of peonies and buttercups and damp greenery, half-smiling. A little after a while, Draco did slide them out of his grip, though slow to it in something uncertain, perhaps bewilderment. He was still eying him.

"Would any of your other childhood enemies turned involuntary spouses buy you _flowers_?" Harry spread his arms grandly, raising an eyebrow. "I don't think so." 

Draco let out a breath of amusement, a slight smile, a little to himself. He shook his head, broke his gaze away from him to look down at his flowers again, his leather-gloved fingers brushing a little over them. 

By the time they got to Dubai, they were spending relatively less time going to many places, due to the fatigue taking Draco faster, and the headaches that were at times so severe that they left him too sensitive to noise and light. When they could, they went to the very top of the Burj Khalifa, which was so high that the small stars in the sky illusively seemed aligned at their eye-level. Below, they could just hardly see the dancing fountains, the coloured beams. All of the city stretched out ahead of them like golden and blue and white pinpoints of light, lines of blurry golden roads, the dark shapes of architecture.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Harry roused, not entirely certain what had pulled him from sleep.

Then he heard it, through the fuzz of slumber still coating his mind, leadening his limbs. There was the sound of a shallow, erratic breathing throughout the room, a small shuddering. It was hushed, but even then, it was audible in the overall silence. Alarmed, he quickly leaned up onto a shoulder. 

In the dark, he could see the tremors of a narrow back.

"Draco?" Harry said. Draco had stilled at the sound of his voice. He reached an arm over the pillow and touched his bicep, frowning. "Are you…"

"No," Draco rasped, unmoving. He cleared his throat, quickly. "No. Fine. Go back to sleep."

Harry swallowed, and laid back down. He followed the rhythm of the rise and fall of Draco's body, not able to fall back asleep.

"Alright?" Harry asked, softly. 

There was no answer.

It was a long while after, when Harry had stopped expecting any answers, that Draco did turn over onto his back, with a scooting of his body, a press of his foot on the mattress. Then he was facing up at the ceiling, a shaky breath shuddering through his body. Above the barricading, Harry could see his hair, mussed and spread out all over his own pillow.

It was an even while longer that Harry, tentatively, put his hand up on the pillow between them. 

There wasn't anything back, and again, Harry began to think that there wouldn't be anything back at all, until there was a small exhale, and a hand finally moved up, flexed over a shoulder and onto the pillow, and clasped his own, trembling and tight. Harry turned their hands over, keeping the strain off Draco's wrist. 

They laid there like that, in the dark. Harry, lying on his side, a palm tucked under his cheek, the artificial comfort passing between their hands like the sway of the sea. Harry was thinking, vaguely, of not being able to breathe, fear tight in his throat, and Draco's voice, whispering, _it's okay_ , the warmth of his hand just like this. He thought of passing out drunk in couches, waking up in beds. Thought of meals on the counter, under stasis. The Calming Draughts in his medicine cabinet.

"I'm scared," Draco whispered, face half-hidden behind the pillow. He sounded impossibly young, in that raw admittance.

"I'll take care of you." Harry whispered back, squeezed his hand. He swallowed. "I'll be here. And all the people that you love."

There was nothing said. Harry never was one with all the right words, never was good with them, and he did not know if this was at all what Draco needed to hear.

But then Draco's head bobbed, slow and small at first, then a jerky, quick sort of nod. His breaths shuddered slightly again, and he sniffed, rough like tearing paper, perhaps blinking it all back. Harry wondered if he believed him at all, if he was just trying to. They just stayed like that instead, silent and inside their own heads, until Harry could hear his breathing deepen in sleep. He did not let go even then, pressing a thumb to the beat of his heart at a corner of his wrist. Feeling him alive. Here.

* * *

  
  


"What did you want to be when you were a kid," Harry said, sitting next to him on grass at a national park. They were in Tokyo.

"A fiendfyre fighter."

Harry smiled at him on the screen, at the turn of his face, behind the camera where he could not see it.

"And you?" Draco said, looking back at him, or rather into the camera.

"Me?" Harry said. "I wanted to be a heavy metal rockstar."

Draco's brows jumped, quick, and then his cheeks folded into a huff of a laugh, his eyes crinkling. 

"What?" Harry asked, in a breath of a laugh.

Draco shook his head, quickly, still grinning, staring out into the distance ahead. The sun was setting, glowing golden from between the tree branches.

"I'd have done great as a heavy metal rockstar, you know, come on," Harry said, grinning at him grinning, just blindly wanting more of it. "Just _imagine_ me with a mullet and some leather pants. Don't you think I'd look good?"

"Your hair would never cooperate enough for a mullet," Draco said, with a wave of his hand, still seeming amused. "Come now, we have to see the Taiwan Pavilion."

They never made it there.

They never made it there because Draco had grown pale and shaky half-way through the walk to it. Harry took his elbow, his other shoulder, led him away from eyes and behind a tree in case they needed to Portkey back to their hotel.

"Draco?" Harry said, kneeling down in front of him, where he'd fallen back against a tree. He had a hand on his elbow.

"I just… I need a minute," Draco said, thick and tremulous. There was a smudge of blood under his nose, on the knuckles of his hand where he was pressing against it, and his breathing was heavy. Harry quickly got out a handkerchief and gave it to him, Draco's hand fumbling to take it, pressing it to his nose. He looked like he was in pain, a tense line between his brows.

"Draco? Does it..." Harry stopped, swallowing hard. He rephrased the stupidly obvious question he was about to ask. "Where does it hurt?"

Draco blinked, brows twitching further in confusion, chest heaving slightly. It appeared to take him some time to register what was being said. "I...My chest?"

Harry didn't know what the uncertain tone meant. He was then fumbling single-handedly through the medicine bag, not budging the other hand from Draco, trying not to be frantic. The painkiller potion came into hand, and he put it to Draco's grip, his own remaining there as Draco opened it with trembling hands and drank it down until Harry stopped him with a hand to his wrist.

It was taking too long to come into effect. Draco was leaning into his shoulder. Harry brushed a quivering hand down the nape of his neck, trying his hardest to keep himself calm. He had a tentative hold around Draco's waist.

"I think we should head back for now," Harry murmured. 

"No," Draco said, his breaths shallow. He lifted his head, hand on Harry's shoulder, and he was swaying slightly. "No, it's fine, we can… we still have to…"

But his words faded, and his eyes were glazed, and Harry knew they couldn't go on. He held Draco tighter by the waist and took them back to the hotel room by the wrapped portkey in his pocket, where they spent the rest of the day in bed doing nothing spectacular and adventurous, ordering room service and watching TV on low. Harry was sitting up on the other side of a pillow, couldn't stop looking over at Draco drifting in and out, breathing a soft lilt of squeaky inhales and exhales. He had the back of a hand in the space between them, a loose curl of his fingers.

Harry listened to him breathe, for the longest time, trying very hard not to take his hand into his own.

  
  


* * *

  
  


"Take me for a dance?" Draco said. He was holding his hand out over the table. Their dinner was finished, and they were both on their third or fourth glass of fine wine.

They had stopped here on the way to have dinner. It was a fairly fancy place, full of golden sconces and candlelights, all lush red decor. Outside, the rain pattered fast and loud, rushing over roofs and falling to the streets in a roaring rhythm, and through the window beaded with droplets, they could see the way it had made the streets dark grey, the blurred blue neon lights of the place across from here. 

A few couples were swaying together at the open space by the piano, and there was a man sitting there at the stool, singing along to the soft melody playing to his fingers.

Harry realised he was still staring at Draco's downturned hand, took it gently in his own right as it was seemingly about to retract back in a slight twitch, a curl of fingers. He lifted his head and met Draco's eyes, who was looking quite flushed and drunk, could feel all the fine skin and delicate bones in his grip.

He stood to his feet, slightly wobbly, and walked Draco over to where all the people in love were dancing together, laughing with their faces close together, speaking in low, intimate voices.

There, Draco turned around into a small crossing of Harry's space, facing him, curling one arm around his neck, then the other. Harry's hands came up to touch his waist, an off-focus and dimmed vision fixated on grey eyes, a lovely face.

In the silence, in which the man at the piano sang on to fill it, Draco looked much too solemn, his mouth small, a faint line between his brows. He seemed very lost in the haze of his thoughts, gaze distant over Harry's shoulder. They were moving in the small steps of a dance, feet a little unsteady and out of sync sometimes, when they swayed and ended up leaning a little too much into each other. 

Harry wanted him to have been with somebody he loved, but he wanted Draco to have loved him. He wanted Draco to have been married to the right person, but he wanted to have been that right person for him, and he wondered if it was this that Draco was so sad about, that it was Harry he had to have all this with—not somebody else. If he was sad that he could not have had somebody that meant more to him in these spectacular moments of adventure, somebody he would never have chosen if he had a choice. Somebody that wasn't Harry.

"Do you," Harry murmured, thinking he shouldn't ask at all, and somehow still went on to, his mind a little too muddled and his inhibitions a little too out of touch with his actions. His voice came slightly slow, slurry, weighted. "Do you wish you could have been with somebody else? Somebody you wanted."

Draco's gaze came back to Harry, away from his thoughts, and his brows twitched. Then a corner of his lips quirked, and he made a sort of noise in his chest, a quietly wry laugh but not quite. Harry couldn't tell if it was mockery or not. 

He lifted one hand off of Harry's neck and put it light at his temple, eyes flicking up there, back down to his own. They seemed a little mellowed, glazed with inebriation in this light, almost as if in a sort of fondness. "Well. I think you'll do just fine, Harry," he said, softly.

It was his fingers, brushing over Harry's lightning scar, thumb coming over his brow, and his mouth slanted into the slightest of a smile. It was the two of them, circling slowly in the small steps of a dance, a strange and sad sort of finality breathing between them, and the man at the piano, still singing, _my, my, my darling, please don't let go._

_My, my, my darling, please don't go._

  
  


* * *

  
  


That night, Draco was settling in on his side of the bed, under the covers. He had his back to Harry and was reaching over himself, pulling up at the christened barricading pillow, trying to get it between them. His hands were clumsy and uncoordinated, and still, there was that same too-solemn and glazed and afar look on his face, the sadness heavier in his inebriation.

Harry was drunk, and slow, his mind leaden with the alcohol in his system, and with his inhibitions loosened, it was the easiest thing to grab the pillow out of Draco's hands, throw it down at the foot of the bed instead. He scooted over across the distance between them and left an inch of space, and he folded a loose arm around Draco's middle.

Harry could feel his body, the muscles of his abdomen stilled and taut against his hand. 

It was another moment after that the tension finally lessened, in a small dip of his shoulders, minutely at first, and then — altogether.

There were many reactions Harry had expected. It was not the way he stayed entirely quiet and still, fell asleep not long after. Harry followed him as well, with the calm of waves between them, like the sea, and the heat of their bodies close, the tender ache in his chest closer. His own heart, throbbing against Draco's back.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


They went to one more place the day before they would go back home, and that was in Leith Hill, Surrey. They'd gone to a few places like these, but Draco never seemed to get bored of sitting high upon hills, looking out over the small part of a world flowing through civilisation. 

Everything was so very slow and calm from up here. All these rivers of life and people, flowing from place to place, unaware of the pairs of eyes on them all.

It never stopped, for anybody. Like time itself.

Here, they watched life live itself through a city. Above, the sun was golden through the clouds, all brilliant waves of light everywhere. Draco was losing himself in it all, the way he had with those paintings — that almost-peace and quiet awe for beauty, like he was seeing it all for the very first time, not the last.

It was a while after that Harry felt the tentative fingers over the back of his hand, in his lap. It was easy now, to turn his own palm up, let them slide into the spaces of his own. To hold it back, tightly, and hold it still even as it jittered up his arm. Neither of them moved, or spoke for a time.

It was terrifying, in that moment.

And it was in the face of this terror, and the wind so cold and raw on his nerves and his skin and in his lungs, the feel of his own pounding heart, that Harry felt wondrously, horribly alive—here where they sat watching over a world that looked bright and sharp and overwhelmingly vast, like all the colours of a painting have deepened themselves to look more vivid to him. And the two of them, so small.

How terrifyingly strange, to be so aware of his own being and breathing and beating heart, still beating even after everything, even after having died once already. How terrifyingly strange, to not only be so aware of himself, but of somebody else's own being and breathing and beating heart, the breakable fragility of Draco's body pressed against his own side. How terrifyingly strange to be so in love with another person, to have all these overwhelming feelings and realisations in the ache of his own bones and stomach and heart, and to still be so held back by the force of his inhibition, because in that moment all he wanted was to turn his head and kiss Draco Malfoy, and even now — even now, he did not, paralysed by fear and doubt, by all the reasons he could not, by the way things often never were as one wanted them to be.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

It almost went hushed under the whipping wind in his ears, breathed out thick into it. Draco was not looking at him, so lost he was in the view, that almost-peace and quiet awe for beauty.

 _Beautiful_ , Harry felt out the word in his mind, looking at him.

He faced ahead, after a stilled moment, towards life and time and their endless, unstopping currents. He couldn't see anything. All the world was blurred.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


There was always a sort of comfort in capturing fragments of time, especially when it all seemed to have gone by in such a quick haze. He looked back and could only remember anything by a picture, a video capturing a moment in motion, could see himself in all of them as he desperately tried to grasp at every fact and detail with his senses, his mind. His camera. Trying to store as much of Draco as possible. Trying to keep him in every way he could.

They were home again, back in Grimmauld Place. While Draco was off for a shower, Harry sat in their bed, roving through it all in his camera. He had to have another memory card, because the last one had gotten full. It had many blurred pictures of Draco, but he didn't delete any of them. He wanted them all.

There were many mundane pictures, just Draco walking down the street, sitting in a car beside him with his face towards the window, across the booth from Harry where they ate, stood beneath tall historical buildings as he observed them to the fullest. 

The videos were just as mundane too, just Draco, humming along quietly to a song playing in a car driving them towards their hotel, not noticing the camera on Harry's lap, turned on him, half-hidden behind a hand. Just Draco, pulling at Harry or shaking his arm off-frame. Draco, talking, explaining history and facts, regaling Harry with his own stories and prior travel experiences. Draco, walking along the sidewalk, head dipping down slightly as he smirked at Harry's retelling of a very uncomfortable encounter with a starstruck receptionist. Draco, turning his face into the camera, his grin crinkling into his eyes as his mouth moved, the rays of the sun behind his head, shadowed by him.

Draco, annoyed at him, pushing at his hand and the front of the camera to black it out, saying, _I'm talking to you, you know, not to this bloody eye thing_ . Harry's laughter had gotten into it too, the way he'd grabbed at his wrist in a mindless, quick attempt to stop him. Harry's voice behind the camera, saying, _tell me another secret, anything I don't know,_ and Draco, the screen all fumbling black and tussling noise as he stole the camera from Harry, turned it onto Harry's own face to say, _You first, I can't be the one revealing all my secrets._

Just Draco in small moments, being there, with Harry.

In watching these videos, he could remember all the times the words had been there, right there on the edge of his tongue. The way he felt. He had watched Draco laugh at something Harry said, and all he could think was, _I love you._ He had listened to him go off on tangents about fucking Hitler trying to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower and the elevator cables being cut down by the French and all he could think was, _I love you_ . He had sat across booths from him, him under the fall of morning light through cafe windows, absolutely quiet, and all he could think was, _I love you_.

But then he always remembered Draco saying, _I'll likely never want you that way either,_ and he remembered Draco saying, _I agreed to it for my own reason_ s, and he remembered the way the curse muddled so much between them, how strange and uncomfortable it could be for Draco to be held by a man he would know was in love with him when he didn't feel the same, and the way Draco didn't need to be burdened by anything more that had to do with Harry, because Harry had done enough to ruin him. And then he knew that he could never say anything.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


It was weeks after reaching the end of their travelling journey that Draco began to wither drastically. He got out of bed late most days, a blatant contrast to his habit of waking early. His magic grew more erratic — he would try to cast a small spell, and it would either fizz out, or something in the room would explode, and he always looked visibly uncomfortable whenever he did try. 

Though these days Draco still seemed almost alright, if only a little fatigued. If only a little out of it sometimes. But he got out of bed, and he took care of himself well, with a forceful and mastered sort of discipline even through his fatigue. He visited his mother, Andromeda and Teddy, and he wrote owls to Luna, and he met with his Mind-Healer, who was specialised in dealing with people undergoing terminal illnesses.

But there were also times Harry would have to floo him home from a visit to his mother, to Andromeda and Teddy, lead him back to bed. There were times Harry would have to draw all the curtains together if it was day, or close all the lights if it was night, because he had awful headaches and anything more than darkness and silence hurt him. There were times Harry would have to get him a Pepper-Up Potion, hold his weight up against his own side and keep his hand around Draco's waist. Draco's head would lean against his shoulder as he drank down the prescribed quarter with a shaky hand, the two of them sitting together on the bed.

There was a time Harry found him sitting against the counter, having come home from a short visit to the Weasleys. Draco had as good as shoved him into the fireplace with all his insistence, telling him to go be somewhere outside of this house on his own and come back in an hour. Harry had come back a half an hour earlier.

There were vegetables unevenly sliced, the rest left uncut on the chopping board. A few plates were shattered near the counter. 

A quick, frantic stock of Draco's appearance told Harry that he was alright, other than perhaps an erratic and weakened magic. He was staring off into the middle distance, not seeming to see much of anything.

"Draco?" Harry said, a deep furrow between his hands. He had skirted around the counter quickly to reach him, settling down as he put his folded jacket on the empty space next to him. "Draco, hey. What happened?"

Harry sat there through the silence stretching after his own voice, only the tinny song from the wireless on the kitchen table, taking him in — the back of his head tilted against the edge of the counter, his eyes red and swollen. His face was held together, worn and hollow.

Harry had stopped expecting an answer, and he was just on the edge of reaching a hand out for him, blindly wanting to touch him.

"It's gone."

Harry looked up at his face, the side of it. 

"My magic," Draco said, then, hoarse and thick, and the bottom of Harry's stomach fell out right then and there.

Harry floundered for something to say, sick to his throat with his own riot of emotions, his own fear. He looked down at the wood tiles instead, just sat there and stared at nothing with him. Draco's breaths shuddered next to him, low in his chest, a controlled exhale.

A weight pressed gently against Harry's shoulder, the soft of a cheek and the hard of a bone, and he could smell the shampoo in Draco's hair. The back of his fingers pressed against the back of Draco's. His throat convulsed, thick and tight, when Draco slipped them over his hand, head bowed against his shoulder as they watched Harry entwine them together on the tile between them, their forearms pressed together. 

"I'm here," Harry said, nearly soundless under the tinny song playing. "I'm right here."

Draco was quiet, just leaning against him. Harry wanted to see his face. He wanted to see if he was falling asleep, if he was crying, wanted to pull him wholly into his arms and hold him close to his shoulder and calm him with a kiss. But he just stroked his thumb over the side of Draco's hand, with a minute shift of his own cheek sliding against silky hair, adjusting for a firmer, more comfortable rest.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a somewhat intense depiction of illness in this chapter

The worst came, one night.

Harry had woken up not knowing why, only felt the tinge of something empty and going against habituation in his arms, and then something uneasy. A faint wave of magic. The space beside him was empty.

He'd climbed out of the sheets, his steps quick as he strode out the open door, and then he could hear the pained sounds, and then he was running.

He found Draco in the bathroom, curled up against the wall, sweaty and tensed and trembling. His neck was taut with it, his breaths shaky and erratic. The bathroom smelled sick.

"Fuck." Harry rushed over, touched his face, dropping to his knees. "Draco?"

"I don't—it just started—hurting—" Draco choked out, as Harry was maneuvering himself around him, pulling him back against his chest, in the cradle of his legs. Draco was heavy against his sternum. He pulled him tight, wrapping his arms around him, putting his cheek to his forehead.

"Where?" Harry asked, sounded calm even as he brushed a shaky hand over his shoulder, his bicep.

"Everywhere—nowhere—I don't know, I can't tell—" it came out shaky, forced out of him all fragmented and tight. Draco gasped a sound that bordered on a sob. He swallowed hard, trying to speak. His face twisted, and he shook harder, his voice a whisper when it did come again, "It _hurts_."

"It's okay," Harry whispered back, his throat burning, feeling that same old helplessness and uselessness. He was desperately running a hand all over him, over his face, his hair, his shoulders. He gripped one of his hands, trying to soothe something, trying to pull at the bond, make it give. Was this it? He thought, momentarily, his eyes stinging. Was this all the time Draco had? "It's okay. I'm here. I'm right here."

"I'm not—very good with pain," he whispered, terrified. His breath hitched. Harry moved his hands up and down his hair, the nape of his neck, his spine.

Harry kept trying to conjure a Patronus, but it was hard these days to think of anything happy enough for it. He closed his eyes, swallowed hard, tried to calm down. When did it become so hard for him to think when he got scared? 

He would feel it, wouldn't he? Their magical cores were connected. The bond, the marital channel, they linked them together. Harry would feel it, if it was happening right now. He kept telling himself this, whilst murmuring the spell that would let him feel his internal state, _sentienta core_ , whilst resting a hand over the wild pounding of Draco's heart mimicking his own. He'd feel it, and it didn't feel like that. It had burnt out, a good quarter of it, but it wasn't—it couldn't be—

Draco was shivering, breathing unsteadily, tensed and taut all against him. Harry held him closer, tighter, kept on whispering nonsense and trying to soothe him with his hands, not knowing much else, not knowing what else to do. Even when he fell unconscious, Harry didn't move. He sat there very still in the roiling of his fear, afraid of letting him go, afraid he'd wake up again, that he wouldn't wake up at all. He sat there until his back began to ache, and he didn't know how long it must have been before he finally gained the courage to touch his hand to his chest again, feeling his heartbeat. 

Then, turning his face into Draco's hair, began to tremble with his entire body, pulling him closer with an arm and trying not to cry. 

Harry moved again only when he was sure, only when he didn't think it would hurt him, lifted Draco in his arms and carried him back to their bed.

By the third time it'd happened, Harry understood it was another symptom, even if it felt catastrophic and terrifying. The second time too, Harry had found Draco retching in the bathroom, gagging when there was nothing left, violently shaking against the wall after.

Sometimes it was visible, running bright and sharp through him in tremors. Other times it just made him go lax against Harry, quiet in his arms except for his shallow and slow breaths against his neck. Harry couldn't tell which was worse.

Draco's forceful and mastered discipline could no longer hold against his heavy weakness and fatigue, and it grew difficult for him to take care of himself. He spent most of his days in bed, or laid on the couch, Harry with him, and he wouldn't visit anybody or agree to any fire calls alerting him to their oncoming visits because he didn't want to be unpleasant with them. 

But everybody started coming to visit him anyway, would sit at his bedside, Narcissa holding his hand while he slept, or Andromeda sitting there wordlessly with him on some bad days, talking to him if he was seeming well enough for it.

On the somewhat better days, Narcissa had him curled around her, lying his head on her lap. Andromeda came with Teddy in tow, often, or left him with somebody else if it didn't seem like a good time for Draco, but whenever Teddy did come, he seemed to be the brightest beam in a grey, day-lit room, his wide-eyed innocence and babbled stories in the silence, playing at the foot of their bed. Draco, watching him quietly, from where he was half-sat against Harry or the headboard, with a blatant, tired sort of affection. 

Luna had travelled back to London once her latest contract ended, showing up at the fireplace frequently.

She would settle against Draco's side, show him all the pictures she took of wildlife throughout the world, or just lean against his shoulder while he slept, holding his hand, either entirely silent or speaking to Harry in murmurs so as to not disturb his rest. When he was awake, she would lie against his side and tell him all about the different magical creatures she had come across, both terrestrial and aquatic.

"What's this?" Draco rested a finger on the picture of a green, slimy creature that seemed to have been flattened.

"Globfish," Luna said, smiling against his shoulder. "They look very different when you put them in water."

Sometimes Harry had to stay with them, but he left them alone with him as often as possible, if Draco wasn't hurting, because he emotionally needed more people than Harry in a time like this, aside from him. People he didn't only need in necessity and that didn't seem to only be there out of necessity, because Harry knew he was there because he wanted to be, but maybe Draco didn't, and couldn't. Never entirely.

George, too, came by often to check on the two of them, and Ginny as soon as she could get her schedule cleared. So did Ron and Hermione, and Molly too, but most days they did not come upstairs, as if to not burden or disturb, and so Harry only knew by the handwriting on the notes reminding Harry to eat, take care of himself. Only noticed their house left cleaner than before, food always on their table under stasis, a replaced set of potions in the medicine cabinet for pain and malaise and nausea.

Nowadays, Draco would either be drifting in or out or awake and silent. Much of the time now, he was irritated and withdrawn, but there were times—when he was feeling somewhat better—that he would talk to Harry, trying to come out of his body and his mind, trying to grab onto something outside of it. 

"Why..." Draco said, the word a crack. His breaths quivered in a sort of laugh, hair riding up against Harry's shoulder. He swallowed, eyes closing, as if to regain his voice to speak. "Why a heavy metal singer?"

There was a delay, Harry still trying to gather himself. His throat convulsed, shifted his jaw against Draco's hair. 

"Just sounded nice, I suppose. To my seven year old self," he said, finally. "The freedom of touring around the world in a camp bus, when I was so locked away all the time, making a living off of screaming bloody murder into a mic." He didn't entirely know what he was saying, just saying anything that came to mind. "I, um… I used to close myself in my room and just garble nothing into the back of a hairbrush, thinking I sounded brilliant. Only one of the neighbours ended up calling the muggle police, and… and I don't really know what they thought was happening but..." 

Draco began to tremble slightly against his chest, and Harry's shoulders tensed. His hand was quick to the side of Draco's jaw, craning his head down to get a look at him, terrified it was all coming back again until he heard the sounds coming. 

He was just laughing, thick and watery, sort of choked and forced out of him in stilted bursts, and Harry was putting his forehead to his before he was realising it, laughing with him in that same thick and watery way, overcome with a love so tender and painful he didn't know where anything began and ended. He could not bring himself to tell Draco the rest of the story, when the Dursleys came home and got so angry at him.

The silence came over them again. Draco was looking up at him, still the lingering wisp of a smile at a corner of his lips. He hadn't showered in days, so exhausted he was now. Harry knew then that he must love him something terrible, because he didn't mind that, that he smelled faintly of sweat and illness and what was uniquely himself. That he still wanted to press a kiss to his neck.

Draco raised his hand, an elbow resting heavily against Harry's collarbone. "You have a crook in your nose."

"You might guess where it came from," Harry said, letting out a wry breath, as Draco touched it beneath the centre of his glasses. It was slight, hardly noticeable unless somebody looked very closely.

"Sorry," Draco whispered, brushing his fingers over the bridge of his nose. He was frowning, perhaps with remorse, his face softened and worn as that of one on the verge of slumber. "Sorry for everything I... sorry."

"Water under the bridge," Harry said, pressing his own fingers to the back of Draco's. Their voices were so low, just between them. He snorted a slight smile, trying to make light. "I suppose it adds some character to it." But Draco didn't smile. He was still frowning, and a vapor of that stayed even after he fell asleep. Harry smoothed it over gently.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


The fourth time it hit had Draco folding over, hands tight around the desk. He was gasping in pain, and Harry was already at his side, trying to pull him towards himself.

"Get off me!" Draco screamed, throwing his hand off, and Harry startled back a step, hand left hovering in the air. He was bowing back over again, both hands still tight around the edge of the desk, crying — Harry realised only then, with the soundless trembling of his shoulders, and then the hitched breaths, that he was crying.

"Draco," Harry said, stepping forward, reaching for him again.

Draco shoved at his chest, forcing him to stumble back a step. "Just go! Get out!"

Harry took his arm, held fast this time. "Draco," he whispered. "Please."

Draco pushed at him again. "Get the fuck out! I don't — This is — " His breaths shuddered, his face contorting fully. "Fuck you. You did this to me. This is—this is all your fault—" His voice was thick and wavering again, and he was breaking apart again, and he was breathing hard, laboured. He looked so very sick, hurting. 

Harry's eyes burned, and he blinked furiously as he reached for his face and touched his cheeks very softly, whispering, "I know. I know. I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry—"

Draco hit his chest, but it was feeble, hardly hurting. He was hitting him again and standing rigid when Harry tried to pull him in. It wasn't too hard to draw him into his chest on the next tug, gripping him tight as he was falling, gasping out in a terrible voice, "Look what you did to me."

"I'm sorry." Harry's voice shook. He swallowed once, and twice, and didn't let himself cry into his hair, holding him close. When the illness and pain abated and Draco fell asleep, Harry carried him back to the bed, and went out the room, into the bathroom where he closed himself inside. He sat alone against the door for a very long time, a blurry and distant stare fixated beside a white bulb light.

  
  
  


* * *

Draco was easing himself to lie on his side. Harry put the tray of an empty plate aside on the night table, doing the same. He folded an arm around him, a hand at his spine.

"Did you eat?" Draco rasped, whilst they were laid together sideways, facing each other. Their legs were tangled together.

"Yeah," Harry said, stroking his hairline, resisting the urge to break through the knots in his hair. Sometimes he would do that whilst he was asleep, very gently, trying not to wake him. "I did."

Harry was forgetting to take care of himself often, these days. Draco had taken to reminding him of it whenever he could, to go take a shower, to eat as well, as did the notes left by Ron, Hermione and Molly around the house.

"Tell me a secret." 

His gaze focused back onto Draco, who was looking at him. 

"A secret?" Harry asked, softly.

Draco smiled slightly. "Anything I don't know."

_These nights, I dream of losing you too._

_And I don't know what I will do. Without you._

He wondered if Draco knew, already. How scared he was too.

"I used to spit in my cousin's late night snacks," Harry said, instead, just the closest thing at random his mind could grasp. "Because he would wake me up at like, two, for a sandwich."

It was an extremely boring and mundane fact. But Harry got the feeling that that didn't really matter all that much right now. 

"Why you?"

Harry shrugged. "He just basically saw me as his servant."

Draco still seemed fairly confused by this.

"Your turn?" Harry asked. 

They lapsed into silence, as Draco seemed to think for one of his own.

"I didn't cry," he finally said. "At my father's funeral."

Harry thought of him, eighteen years old and curled up and lonely against the side of a couch. The way he'd straightened upon seeing him, a flush in his cheeks, eyes red-rimmed.

"But I do miss him," Draco said, quieter. The secret. "I know he wasn't a good man, or even the best father… but sometimes I think of being six, that time he read to me with all the voices… and I…"

Harry stroked his hair back, absently. He had nothing kind to say about Lucius, and he couldn't entirely understand it, but at an intellectual level, he knew he could hardly fault a son for missing his parent.

"I thought of you," Draco said, thin and raspy. "When he died."

Harry's eyes lifted to him. He frowned, bemused. "Why?"

Draco smiled, thin and wry. "Made fun of your dead parents. I didn't realise how much that could hurt… until I had a dead parent that everybody made fun of." He stared Harry in the eyes. His own looked so tired, sunken, and it hurt. Softly, "I'm sorry."

"I know," Harry said. He didn't know what else to say. "I'm sorry too. It must have hurt you a lot."

Draco hummed. They lapsed into silence again. On the wall was a shape of a diagonal shard of evening light, yellow-orange illuminating the room. Harry's mind focused on it, all the while he was rubbing his thumb back and forth over the space beside Draco's spine, just wanting to hold him as close as he could.

"Do you think it hurts? Dying?"

Harry looked back at him. There was something brimming in his eyes, beneath the illness keeping them worn.

He didn't want to think about it, had been trying not to, what would happen, when there would be no wireless playing in the mornings, and no violins in the evenings, and nobody on the right side of the bed — the thought of Draco —

But there was something Draco was searching for, within that question. 

He thought of standing in a forest, and the flash of a green light heading his way. How his consciousness had been consumed into nothing, not unlike sleeping. He didn't remember any pain at all.

"Easiest thing in the world," Harry said. _Quicker than falling asleep,_ Sirius had said, when Harry asked him the same thing, was looking for the same thing. He'd been right.

"You wouldn't know for sure."

"I do."

"How would you?"

"Because I've died."

The silence came over them, hollow and long. Draco was staring at him, brows deeply knitted together.

"In the forest," Harry continued. "I had the resurrection stone." It was now that he wished, desperately, that he still had it. "It gave me a choice to go, or come back."

"You came back."

"I came back."

"You… it didn't hurt at all?" Draco asked, after a very long time. "For you?"

"Not at all," Harry said. He brushed a hand over his rib, the feel of a somewhat clear ridge if he pressed slightly. 

Draco swallowed. "Good. You wouldn't… you wouldn't deserve that at all," he said, his lips a sad slant. "It won't be quite painless before that though, for me."

There was a tingle in Harry's throat. He swallowed it down. He didn't want to say it, and thinking about it made his breaths climb up his throat, heavy and painful. It made his face go numb, and his hand trembled, tightening around Draco's shirt, clutching him just a bit closer.

But he said — forced it out of himself, "I'll make sure it won't, as much as I can."

Draco smiled at him, a small, wavering thing.

"Luna once told me about karma. Did you know?" he spoke again, after a while. His voice had gone strained.

It took a moment for Harry to really understand what he was trying to say. When it sank in, Harry's face furrowed, and he was left voiceless for another moment, mouth working. "Draco," he whispered. "Come on."

Draco's chin quivered, lips pressing tight, firm. He blinked, rapidly, trying to look away. "I'm tired."

Harry stroked his hair, wanting to get him to look at him. "Sometimes bad things just happen, even to good people."

"I wasn't a very good person."

"You are a very good person now," Harry said. _I fell in love with you for it,_ he didn't say. "And by that logic, I must be the most awful person you know, seeing as my life has just been one shitehole to another."

Draco laughed, quavering and thick. "Most annoyingly noble tosser I have ever met."

Harry laughed, too, pressing his temple into his.

When it passed, Harry's smile faded, turned a little rueful. He thumbed a line of a scar across Draco's waist, the ones he had always kept hidden behind glamours. Draco couldn't cast them anymore. "Not always," he said, quietly.

"I was about to curse you," Draco said.

"Would it have worked?"

Draco's throat convulsed. "I don't know."

"I don't think it would have."

"Tell me another," Draco said.

Harry let the conversation derail, and told him another secret, when he thought of one, that time he inadvertently sicced a snake onto his cousin, which did make Draco laugh. Draco asked for another, so Harry told him another, and another, until it was too hard to come up with any more.

"I'm going to have to think about it," Harry told him.

Draco hummed, on the cusp of sleep. By the time his breathing fell deep into it—a cadenced lilt of faint squeaks when he inhaled, the soft sound of his exhales—Harry still couldn't think of anything else to tell him, watching the gentle close of his eyes, the steady rise and fall of his body. Between them was his hand, the back of it to the mattress, and the loose curl of his fingers. Harry curled his own around them, tucked a thumb into the inside of his palm. Stroked it softly.

There was always one. That Harry could never quite bring himself to say.

His eyes were gritty and heavy, burning with fatigue, still locked tenderly onto Draco's sleeping face.

In a nearly soundless voice, almost lost in his own mouth, he whispered.

"I am so in love with you."

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  


A blind jolt of terror woke Harry in the middle of the night. He blinked, rapid and hard through the grit of slumber in his eyes, trying to see. He breathed, trying to settle down his heart. There was no solid press of a back against his chest.

There was too much space on the bed now, without the pillow. Draco had gravitated far over to the other side of the bed, and was shivering in his sleep. Harry scooted over across the distance, half-asleep, and curled around him again. His own heart went still and calm, and Draco's body went still and calm against it.

  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  


"You must hate this," Draco said, stilted and thick and raspy, on another day. The illness had only just waned.

"Stop that," Harry whispered into his hair. 

"It seems all I do is get in the way of your life," Draco said, in a choked and derisive breath.

"Draco," Harry said. There were so many things he wanted to say. _I want to be here_ , and _I don't mind taking care of you but I just wish you didn't have to need it_ and _all_ _I want is for you to be okay_ and—

"Tell you a secret?" Draco said, before Harry could say anything at all.

Harry drew back a bit, looking down at his face. They were pressed together, half-sat against the headboard. "Yeah?"

There was a moment, where he seemed to struggle with what he wanted to say.

"I lied," Draco said, quietly. "About your magic going away." 

Harry didn't know what to say to that. Draco's face was that of somebody calmly bracing themselves for a terrible reaction. Harry just began moving his fingers through his hair again, the side of his head. His forearm was around Draco's clammy skin, and he could feel the clear jut of a sharp hipbone. He knew the truth already, but he hadn't known if it had been a deliberate misinformation. "Why did you?" Harry asked. "Lie?"

Draco's eyes were on his face. "I wanted you to be more motivated to…" He paused. His throat shifted, subtle. "to help me." 

Harry stared at him, brows furrowed.

"Did you really think I'd have let you — ?"

"Would you really have done this for eighteen years more?"

Harry stared at him. His mouth worked, the truth of the alteration heavy on his tongue. He saw the pallor of Draco's skin, the constant exhaustion in his face, and couldn't bring himself to speak at all.

Draco let out a breath of something wry, strained and low. "I wouldn't have made it anyway. But I knew you would have tried, because you are annoyingly noble as such. Only…only maybe not nearly as hard as if you were to lose something important to you." 

There were the beginnings of a slight burn at the corner of Harry's eyes, a line between his brows — something ablaze and raw and frayed at the nerves of his heart and weighing down on his voice. Draco didn't see it. 

"But I know for a fact that — I am the primary source, and when I die, the curse dies with me," he continued, before Harry could regain his ability to speak. He looked up into Harry's eyes, then, something earnest. Quieter, "You will be free, Harry."

"I want to be free with you." 

"Won't you kiss me?" 

Harry's brain froze on the words, and his chest went constricted.

"I'd like to have a kiss from a good-looking man," Draco said, the corner of his mouth quirking slightly.

But Harry took too long to respond, because he couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

"You can say no," Draco said, softly.

"No," Harry said, when his brain did unfreeze, and he understood Draco wasn't joking. He blinked hard, frowning, swallowed. He was trying to keep himself together, keep his mind away from the burn at the base of his throat. "No, I don't mind at all, I just — you think I'm — "

Draco raised an eyebrow. "You know what you look like." 

"I don't want you to go," but then Harry was choking out, before he could even think about it, when the tide of grief had come over him in such a blinding rush.

"Don't cry, Potter," Draco mumbled. His eyes were so sunken, scarlet under the white daylights through the window. "You don't look so good-looking when you do."

But Harry was anyway, before he even realised that was what was happening, before he could even try to stop his face from twisting ugly. His chest was jouncing in dry heaves, and the tears finally fell out of his control, and Draco was curling a hand gently into the back of his hair, an arm folded above himself, leaning his head down to press his lips against Harry's, dry and chaste.

The grip of fear and grief around Harry's heart soothed of its own accord, the tremors up his face smoothing slightly, just as Draco was letting him go. His eyes were still closed under clumped lashes, his breaths slowing, even if a little unsteady. He pressed his temple against Draco's, could feel his gaze boring into him, and all he wanted was to kiss him again and to keep kissing him until something in this sick and damned curse gave, and gave Draco back to him.

 _Please don't take him away_ , was the desperate whisper of a thought that came to him, only he didn't know who or what it was addressed to.

"Sorry," Harry said, thick, as he drew back to try and hide his face. He quickly swiped the back of a hand over his cheeks, under his nose. "I'm sorry."

"I didn't mean it. What I said," Draco was saying. Harry could still feel his eyes on him. "I was just angry and in pain. I don't really blame you."

"I do."

"Then I forgive you."

Harry swallowed hard, looked down at the back of his own hand on Draco's side, the dampness on them. He could still feel the heat of them through his face, and his breaths were still so heavy they hurt in his throat. "It's not for you to comfort me."

Draco huffed, smirking slightly. His head shifted against Harry's shoulder, his hair all a mess against it. "I know you. Wouldn't want you to spend the rest of your life thinking about… about poor old me."

"Tell you a secret?" Harry said.

"Hm?"

"I already knew. That it wasn't true. Hermione told me."

The furrow between Draco's brows fell away, and his face went strange. 

"I wasn't trying to keep my magic," Harry said, touching his hairline, wishing he could kiss him again. "I was trying to keep you."

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Draco had woken up better than he had in awhile, considerably energetic. The first thing he'd opted for, and a sign that he was feeling quite well, was that he wanted to have dinner with his mother at the Manor, for her birthday some days from now. She visited him everyday, visited him this afternoon as well, but it wasn't quite the same thing as that, and he wanted for the two of them to have a proper birthday dinner. He didn't know how long this would last, and he wanted to use it well.

"Do you want me to come along?" Harry asked.

"No, it shouldn't be too long," Draco said. He was buttoning up his sleeve in front of the mirror. "I'll be back within the hour."

"I could come along, you know. I like your mum."

"But I know you don't like that house. It made your nightmares worse."

"I don't care."

"It's only an hour, Harry."

Harry stayed there in the door in the doorway, arms folded, watching him get ready in the mirror. Draco's voice piped up, without raising his head.

"And I'm not going to keel over right when you look away from me. I'm really feeling alright."

He was fitting his watch around his wrist. He had it tightened due to his weight loss.

"You're really alright?" Harry asked, needing reassurance.

"Yes." Draco looked up at him then, his face slightly softening. "Go have your dinner."

It was a few seconds more before Harry could bring himself to say, "Okay."

It took him another moment to actually tear himself away from there, but he did, finally going downstairs to get started on preparing dinner.

It was when he was setting the cutting board down on the counter that he heard a loud crash from upstairs, a chorus of several deafening thuds. It had Harry's heart shrivelling up, jumping up to his throat. By the next minute, he was running out of the kitchen and up the stairs two at a time, terror curdling in his gut.

He halted at the door, and his eyes found Draco first, examining him with a frantic mind, roving over his body language. 

"Draco—?"

He couldn't see his face, his hair hanging in the way of his profile. He was kneeling on the ground, a little hunched over with his hands on his knees. It was only a second, two, and his feet were again just on the edge of moving further towards him, getting to him, thinking of touching his shoulders, his face, making sure he was okay again—

"I'm fine," Draco said, quick and absent. "I'm…" He trailed off, sounded feeble. He shook his head slightly.

And then he noticed what Draco had been staring at. 

In front of the wardrobe, the door flung open and the drawer broken, were all the paintings splayed on the ground, a little over each other. Draco had a knit between his brows, fingers tentative on the closest one. Harry slumped against the doorframe with the force of the retreat of his panic, the confusing mingle of painful relief, of a new kind of fear. Draco was eying every painting, slow, taking in each one with a sort of wild-eyed confusion, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing, couldn't understand it. 

There was Draco, painted, caught mid-laugh with lines folded at his cheeks, and his eyes lit, crinkled. There was Draco, standing in the blur of golden lights of a charity gala, fairy lights in his hair, and much healthier than he looked now, in front of him. There was Draco in a burgundy tuxedo, head turned a little over a shoulder. There was Draco, in his most mundane moments, sitting in a kitchen chair, in his satin robes on the edge of a bed, in the orange firelights playing his violin. Harry was watching him take them all in, quiet. His gaze finally tore away, lowered down at the tiles on the floor, swallowing.

"I—" Draco said, a very long time later, raspy like he was trying to speak through a dried throat. It fell off, again, for a moment, and then, "What is this? All these..."

 _I capture what I find beautiful. I paint the people that I love,_ was the odd memory that ran through Harry's mind.

"They're…" Harry said, hoarse. He cleared his throat. He couldn't raise his eyes from the floor, couldn't imagine how strange Draco must be feeling seeing all of this. "They're all you." His voice cracked slightly, on the last word.

It seemed like such a ridiculously simple response. He didn't know what else to say. And now Draco could see it, the way Harry's head was always so full of him.

After a while, Harry mustered all his courage, and looked up at him, and he forced himself to say, "I can't get you out of my head." His voice broke off a bit at the end, and he breathed a tremulous sound, a helpless flick at his lips. "And I'm in love with you. And you don't have to—to say anything, or do anything or worry about—I wasn't going to…" He swallowed. "but I have loved you for months now."

There was no hiding it, and maybe it didn't matter in the end anyway, because now that it was out, Harry could think that maybe it was better that Draco knew now, here, when he was still here, that Harry had loved him when he was.

Nothing was said for a long time. Draco was unmoving, his hair still in the way of his face, with his face turned towards the paintings, but he wasn't really looking at them anymore.

Harry didn't know what to do. He could only understand his silence for what it meant. Maybe some part of him had been hoping that the things Draco had done, that were so muddled by their unique predicament, were some of his own wanting. Like when they were dancing, Draco's fingers at his hairline, his brow. Like when he'd asked Harry for a kiss, told him he was good-looking.

"I'll… I'll be in the kitchen, if you want to talk more," Harry said. He turned around, uncrossing his arms, and made a hazy walk out and back to the kitchen, feeling a little out of himself. A little unreal.

He tried to distract himself with dinner, tried not to think much of anything. He tried to ignore the bright and sharp ache in his chest, and the feeling of being cold at his core, the inadequacy of not being wanted back. He listened to Draco's footsteps outside, soft falls of shoes slowing, hushing away until he couldn't hear it anymore.

Something was tight in the back of his throat. Harry closed his eyes, leaned forward onto his hands on the counter, and tried to breathe. He didn't know what would have hurt worse in the end — if he had taken every bit of time he could have had with him, having him. If he hadn't had anything at all, hadn't had even more to lose when the grief of losing him already felt like dying himself.

His mind was loud and full, lost in the turmoil and chaos. He did not hear the footsteps at first, and then he did, right as they seemed to enter the room. When he looked up, Draco was moving towards him, his eyes bright and full of a desperate emotion, and then he was there with his arms around Harry's neck and head, both of them stumbling back a bit as Harry caught him by the waist, startled. Draco's forehead was against his, his breaths warm on his mouth, only sharing his air like a kiss that he couldn't go through with yet.

Harry swallowed hard. Draco closed his eyes, leather-gloved fingers curled into the back of Harry's hair. 

"Wait for me," he whispered, a brush against Harry's mouth.

Then abruptly, with a hand on Harry's shoulder, Draco pushed himself back with a straighten of his arm and let go, and then he was gone, Harry left standing there with his heart pounding and tight and tender, craving after him.  
  



	11. Chapter 11

Harry passed the time by making dinner, and then eating it, not having realised he'd finished until his spoon clinked against an empty plate. His mind had been stuck running through what had happened not ten minutes ago, the memory of Draco's arms around the nape of his neck, cradling his head. The warm breath of his murmur on Harry's mouth, saying, _wait for me._

Five minutes later found him opening the door of their bedroom, moving inside it. He needed to keep himself occupied by something else, before he drove himself mad turning over those three words, finding all the most ludicrous meanings in his disbelief, trying not to be too hopeful. But he kept thinking of the way Draco had angled their mouths together, the hover of a hot breath, and now Harry just wished he'd kissed him first instead.

He sat on the edge of the bed pulling his socks off his feet. He would read, he thought, even as he knew it wouldn't work. His senses were too keen and on edge, listening for the roar of fire below.

Then he heard it, a moment later, and his heart seized up and skittered in his chest towards a speeding race. He straightened, slightly, one sock still half-way off.

The rise of the footsteps on the stairs were light and quick, and then Draco was appearing in the doorway, halting suddenly at the sight of Harry. He seemed a little ruffled and breathless, as if he'd come in a hurry, and for a moment, they just looked at each other in the distance between them, locked right where they were, Harry sat on the bed, turned wholly towards him.

Then Draco was making his way towards him, throwing the coat over his arm aside half-way through.

His hands were on Harry's face, by the next second, straddling him, and it was just that almost-kiss again, sharing each other's air as they were looking at each other, Harry's eyes falling on his mouth, and everything was held right here — all the years of circling around each other. The two of them on the edge of finally meeting, crossing over into new meaning. 

Harry was the one that did, that swallowed as his head moved an inch closer, hesitantly, and upon seeing Draco staying right there, eyes dropping to Harry's mouth as his head angled into the hover of the kiss, Harry finally caught his mouth against his own, with a gentle force that drew Draco's head back. His palm settled gently on Draco's cheek, following after him, keeping him there.

It was a slow one, the kiss. Mouths parting hot and slick into it, closing together. And there was nothing there that wasn't Harry himself, the knot of magic at his core and content, as if it had realised it was no longer needed, gathered itself, and quietly slipped away.

Then Draco was beginning to take control, gaining in speed and ferocity, closing into kisses on Harry's upper lip, his lower lip, the corners, dipping his head to follow the rhythmic movement of their mouths, and Harry, taking every one of them with the force of his own desperation and need, his love and grief. His heart was tightening itself into a thousand, aching knots, all of it like a tender and raw burning in his throat. 

One after another after another, Harry was driven down to his back as Draco lowered himself over him, a slow kiss-by-kiss that pushed him further towards the bed. Draco's hands, at his neck, his jaw, through his hair, the two of them losing themselves in each other.

And Harry would know now what it meant, to lose even more than he already had.

There, the grief lurched violently in his chest, and he broke off with a gasp. His hands had stilled, featherlight around Draco's narrow waist as he closed his eyes, pressed his lips together tightly, Draco's temple pushed onto his. His breaths shuddered, close-mouthed, trying to push back at the turmoil within himself. All the love and horrible grief and love.

"Harry. Harry, it's okay," Draco whispered. His hands were on face, stroking his cheeks.

But Harry shook his head, grabbing Draco's wrist, delicate and thinner and paler with illness, putting his nose to the inside of it, and suddenly he was crying before he could stop himself, his face crumpling hot and tight.

"You're dying," he whispered, a tremor and a hitch. 

Draco shook his head, kissed his wet mouth and brushed his hands over his face again, his hair, over and over, saying, "it's going to be alright now, Harry. It's all going to be alright." Harry was shaking his head, still crying terribly into his skin, not trying to stop at all this time. Draco tilted his face up towards his own with that hand, another at his jaw, and Harry looked up at him, blurry-eyed. Draco was leaning his face over him, achingly tender in a way he'd never been. "Because I'm in love with you. And you're in love with me."

Harry didn't understand this right away. Something niggled at him, and his mind stuck on it, for a very long moment, staring up at Draco's patiently waiting face through a watery, faint frown. _Because I'm in love with you,_ he said. _And you're in love with me._ It was this, the second part of what he said, where laid the true meaning. Everything that had gone wrong in the alteration had led to this, this much he knew, but Harry had not been able to pinpoint what exactly led to Draco's life teetering on this knife's edge, why it hadn't been enough for the two of them to be on decent terms. 

There had always been a missing page to this entire story, one Harry had unknowingly, continually forced himself not to fill in the gaps of, because the curse had muddled so much between them that there was no way of saying what was necessity, and what wasn't. Because he was scared of laying another burden on Draco after all the things that had happened to him because of Harry. Because he was scared of making things uncomfortable between them when they needed the ease and comfort of being close together, now more than ever.

And all of it was falling together into place, and the missing piece had always been this: Draco had been in love with him for a very long time.

That was where Xavier had gone wrong, when he said being on decent terms would suffice. What he hadn't known was that it could never have been enough, because the fact of Draco being in love with Harry had dug a much deeper hole to fill, and this was what had been hurting him all this time.

There were tears clumping his lashes together, caught there. When he craned his head up and kissed Draco again, so very gently, they fell.

"How long?" Harry asked, brushed his fingers at his temple, pushed a lock of his hair behind his ear. Draco's hair was hanging in his face, tilted over Harry's, elbow atop Harry's chest. Harry smoothed a hand over it, brought it up to Draco's wrist.

Draco huffed, a little quavering, his smile small. He shook his head. "Years. Even before the… I've wanted you so long."

There was so much to talk about, and they would, soon, in another time. Right now, with a crane of his neck, Harry only kissed him again then, kissed him hard, pulling him down with a gentle handful of the back of his hair, pulling him in as close as they could by his back and his waist and whispering, _fuck, I love you, I love you, I love you, I—_ and they were rolling sideways and Draco was under him, laughing, a helpless sort of sound. Harry was laughing too, putting his forehead to his, watching him as Draco curled an arm around his neck, then another. Then Harry was kissing him all over his face, every part of him, his cheek and his jaw and his neck and his shoulder, touching him everywhere he could. _Here. Alive. Alive, alive, alive._

  
  


* * *

  
  


Harry fell asleep very late, focusing vividly on the rise and fall of Draco's chest, and the soft rush of the sound of his breathing, warm and steady at his own neck. 

When the birdsong and the gentle hue of daylight, through translucent curtains, awoke Harry again, it was to the first sight of Draco's sleeping face in front of him. He was a heated line pressed flush against Harry's side, all fine skin and thin scars and elegant bone structure.

Harry pulled him closer with the flat of his forearm against Draco's spine, kissing the corner of his mouth, pushed a lock of his hair back behind an ear and pressed a small, chaste kiss to his lips. There was a very imperceptible twitch of a smile in his sleep. Harry laughed softly, overcome by an overwhelming riot of emotions. He wanted to kiss him all over, hold him so close to himself there was nothing between them, love him without an inhale. He ran his other hand down his side over his shirt, settling still at his hipbone in the curl of a grip, all of it, like a habit now. There was a lingering need, even now, to ease pain where there was no longer pain, now just left with the phantoms of his built up instincts, following along to it.

Draco awoke in a slow stir, Harry's knuckles running featherlight over his cheek. His eyes opened, finding Harry's face, cheek on the soft part of Harry's shoulder joint, head tilted back a bit. He brushed a thumb under his eyes, a breath stuck painfully in his throat.

"Hello," Harry said, smiling down at him, and then that breath pushed out into a slightly thick, half-laugh. 

"Hello," Draco said. His lips twitched, just an edge of a mellow, abashed smile. His eyes lowered to Harry's throat, fingers tracing the line of it there.

Harry scooted his head closer on the pillow. 

"Do you feel it?" he asked. Draco hummed, a warm hand splayed over Harry's ribcage.

"It's," Draco said, stopping to search for a word. "It's calm. Like last night."

"Let's just stay like this today," Harry whispered, one hand around the knuckles of Draco's, forehead against his. He wasn't ready to get up, and face life, and do anything other than stay in bed with Draco, reassuring himself of him. 

Draco was looking at him, a little sweeter and more tender with his hair all mussed up, sleep still a slight swell in his eyes.

"Okay," Draco said, softly, and burrowed closer to him. Harry pulled him in, tucked his nose into the hinge of his jaw and breathed him in.

They spent that entire morning in bed, kissing after a breath refreshing charm. Then they merely laid together, pressed close, either in silence or speaking in murmurs in the little breadth between them, and then kissing again, smiling into it, as much as they wanted. Everything in his mind went calm whenever Draco touched him, and Harry didn't know anymore how much of it was the bond, how much wasn't. How much of it was just Draco now.

"What are you thinking?"

Draco hummed, inquisitive, head tilting a little towards him as if he hadn't registered yet what was said. "No. I was just thinking of… how much trouble we could have saved ourselves if even one of us had been brave enough to confess."

Harry swallowed. He felt strangely guilty, in hindsight, for not being that person, because Draco was the one that went through all the trouble for it.

"It wasn't your fault," Draco said, softly. He raised a hand, smoothed a thumb over a brow, the frown at his forehead.

"I could have been the brave one," Harry said.

"Why, because you were the Gryffindor in school?" Draco said, with a raised brow. "You don't think I could be the brave one?"

"You were the one with a lot more at stake, weren't you? You couldn't have said anything, because what if I rejected you, and made everything worse? Or maybe you wouldn't have been able to believe me because of how weird this bond made everything or you'd think you forced me into _—_ " Harry said. He swallowed again, untangling himself to shift onto his back and face the ceiling, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "God. I've been so stupid."

"I kept telling you the opposite of what I felt, trying to protect myself. You couldn't have known. It's not either of our faults."

"Stop trying to comfort me," Harry said. "You're not supposed to be the one comforting me after everything that's just happened."

"That's what people in love do," Draco said, smiling slightly.

Harry pulled him close, kissed the space between his eyes. "I was also afraid of telling you, because I thought… if you didn't feel that way for me too, it would be a burden for you. You know? Or just make everything so strange. I mean… every time we would have to be close, you would think, 'he's in love with me' and feel weird."

"Well. For whatever it's worth now, I really do like that you're in love with me."

Harry laughed slightly. Draco grabbed his face by the chin and kissed him hard.

In the comfortable silence that followed, Harry remembered all the secrets kept close to his chest, that he could no longer tell Draco. He could not tell him of what Harry had known since the beginning, because telling him now would mean bringing in all the doubts that they'd been trying to avoid, that would irrevocably hurt him and put him in danger. He was still riding on the waves of certain emotions, maybe, the terrifying clarity of near-loss and grief and finality, how it had lied under the surface of every passing minute.

"I'm scared," Harry whispered, before he could stop himself. Draco was looking at him, a bemused furrow between his brows. 'I'm just scared of this. All of it. I'm scared that I'll… I'll fuck something up, or something would go wrong again and this damned curse would _—_ " He cut off, voice breaking, no longer able to speak.

"We'll take care of each other," Draco said, taking his hand in his own.

Harry stared at him, throat still burning. He squeezed his waist with an arm, nodded, small and slow at first, then quick and jerky. His eyes were beginning to burn again. It seemed to do that a lot these days. "Yeah. Yeah, we will." 

Harry would take care of him. He would love him so much that he never felt another moment of illness ever again.

Draco looked deeply alarmed, seeing him begin to weep again out of nowhere, and Harry laughed, tremulous, shaking his head, taking his wrist and kissing the inside of it. Draco smoothed a thumb over his cheek with that same hand, even as he was bemused. "Sorry. Nothing. I just _—_ "

Draco was palming his cheeks, pulling his face close to his own, saying, "You're so _—_ " He seemed exasperated, even if tenderly so, and whatever he was going to say faded into the kiss, quieting. It soothed Harry, a bubble of calm up in his chest, no longer clear where it came from. Maybe his mind had just begun to tangle Draco and comfort into the same meaning.

They got up only to get themselves something to eat, somewhere around noon, finally. Harry made them both coffee, and then got started on breakfast. 

He kept looking up at Draco, getting distracted by him standing in front of the kitchen window with a mug held high in his hand, the other tucked under his other arm over his chest. The sun shone against his silhouette, shadowed around his back, the rest of it diverging into blurry, bright golden around him.

When the table was set, Harry went over to him, kissed his shoulder and murmured into it, "Come for breakfast." Though he made no move, either, afterwards to step away, lost in his warmth, the two of them just breathing together in the absolute silence of the kitchen. But for the chirp of birdsong outside, speaking over each other. But for the tremor of a voice, singing on low from the wireless on the kitchen table. He could feel Draco turn his head a little towards him, the hushed smile where he pressed his cheek against Harry's.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Draco had been anxious about what would happen to his core. Though he was well-aware it was regenerative, he worried that there had been too much damage. So they went to have Draco medically examined by Healer Francine, who prescribed ' a lot of bedrest' and some potions that would help him heal faster, though it was to be used when the magical sensitivity dwindled some in several weeks. She reassured him that he would fully recover in every way. It might take months for his core to fully recreate itself, and for his magic to return, but it would happen.

Following this visit, Harry was much too careful about him. He verbally pushed Draco into bed all the time, did not let him do much of anything to do with chores, brought their meals up to bed and ate with him there. They seemed to spend much of the time in bed, either sleeping or just lying together, or talking about everything and nothing, or sometimes Draco would play his violins for a bit, or watch Harry paint. 

"Why did you invite me really, that day?" Harry asked him, once. They were huddled together in bed again, and he was flipping through the pictures in his camera, balanced on his own chest, Draco's forehead against his cheek. Outside the window, a storm was raging, thunderous and howling, the rush of rain falling fast over rooftops and to the pavement. 

"You really took all these pictures, without me knowing," Draco said, blinking. "Some of these are quite unflattering, you know. You're not a very natural photographer."

"I like them," Harry said, frowning. 

"Salazar, why did you take this?" Draco asked, wide-eyed, taking the camera from him and eyeing it closely. Harry did not see what he was so flustered about. 

"You're laughing in it," Harry said. _I wanted to remember it forever, what you looked like._ "You didn't answer my question."

Draco seemed very distracted by the pictures he was going through. 

"Oh, I took this one," Draco said, showing him a picture of Harry. There was wind in his hair, his face a little bemused. "Remember? At least _I_ tried to make you look nice. Do you see?"

"Was it because…" Harry said, faltering. He didn't want to be presumptuous, but he'd thought about it a bit, how Draco hadn't seemed entirely concerned by the purpose he invited him for. How he'd called him back, held his hand out for him, said, _this should be the last time we see each other then, I believe_.

"It was a pathetic attempt at a chance to see you again," Draco said quietly. "I thought I was dying, and I just wanted to see you one last time."

Harry took the camera off his hands and put it aside on the night table. He pulled him on top of himself and close to his chest and kissed him gently on the lips.

"Did you blame me?" Draco asked, when Harry let the kiss go. "For the curse?"

"I don't think so," Harry said, softly. "I was angry back then, that it happened. Maybe I… I was mostly just absorbed in my own… you know. My own shit."

He had been caught up in the force of his anger and pain, and the injustice of being the one chosen for such misfortune. But when that had washed away, he could see with clarity that Draco was just another person that fell prey to this misfortune. Two terrible fates, colliding together.

"I didn't blame you for wanting to be free," Draco said. "Obviously you would. So did I, for that matter, which was why I agreed to the alteration myself. Even if it had saved my life, it was also greatly interfering in it."

"But you were still unsure, weren't you? Would you have done it if I hadn't said all those things, pressured you?"

Draco thought about it. "Well. A good part of why I went through with it was because I couldn't imagine spending so many years with _—_ you would likely have resented me for all of it, for being a coward and not taking our only chance out, for keeping both of us stuck. And that didn't sound like a very appealing life for myself, of course. But I didn't want to choose something just because I was afraid, for once."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence. Harry pressed his cheek to his forehead.

"But I think we made something good out of it," Draco said. "In the end."

"We did." Harry worked at a corner of his lower lip. "I don't… I don't like the curse. Or the forced part." He looked up at Draco, smiling slightly. "But I love you. And I don't mind being yours."

Draco's throat flexed, a hint of an apostrophe smile. He was tracing circles on Harry's chest, seeming almost shy. Harry couldn't help reaching for his hand. Draco looked up at him, watched him kiss the flat of his fingers, his face as when he was watching Harry kiss his mother's hand. He could read the emotions now, when he had the context, the missing layer of knowledge, how he felt about Harry. Draco was smiling, running them over his lips sweetly after the kisses. 

"You're terribly saccharine," Draco said, though he didn't seem to mind it all that much. "Can we get up now?"

"But Francine said bedrest," Harry said, brows furrowing.

"I'm sure she didn't mean we were to charm ourselves stuck to it." 

"I think that's very much what she meant."

Still, Harry crawled out of bed, pulling at his hand as he did. Though bemused and uncomprehending at what he must have in mind, Draco climbed out of bed on his knees, following along to his hands.

By the window where the storm roared outside, they danced in a deliberate swaying of shoulders and waist, so that they rotated around in circles of small steps. Draco was laughing inwardly in his chest, cheeks folding in with it, their foreheads together as he dipped his head. Harry took him in closer, so that they were cheek to cheek instead, Draco's arms coming around his shoulders, the two of them still swaying, turning, in the circle of a dance.

"Did you ever wonder why I came that day?" Harry murmured, cheek against his jaw. "To the Manor?"

"Hm?" Draco said, a soft sound of inquisition. He sounded very content. 

"I don't know why I did," Harry said, breathing a small laugh, because he looked back on himself and thought, he must have always been at least a little mad when it came to Draco. "I just saw your name, and I went."

In the mirror over Draco's shoulder, upon the turn of another half-circle, Harry could see the two of them, pressed close and achingly intimate to each other. Could see his own hands, broad over the waist of Draco's white shirt. Could see Draco with his arms all around Harry's neck, mouth pressed into his shoulder, nose tucked into it. The two of them, by a lamplight, making them all golden and warm.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Draco was an awfully restless person who didn't like staying still, and so after a few days, he tired of being in bed so often and began to grow exasperated by Harry's insistence on rest, though he did soften by his clear anxiety.

Harry had been downstairs making breakfast for the two of them, to be carried up to their bed. Draco had shown up in the kitchen after his shower, insisting on making tea for the two of them just to have something to do.

"Come on, Draco, just go back to bed," Harry said. Draco did not budge from his place, lips pressed together. "Please?"

"Harry, I've done _nothing_ but lie around these past two weeks," Draco said. "I'm tired of it."

"I know," Harry said, stepping forward, touching his arms. "I know. But… but your body and core need time to recover. Remember? You need to rest. Not push yourself around just yet."

"I can rest here on this chair," Draco said, gesturing at the table. Whatever he saw on Harry's face made him soften again. He curled an arm around his neck, and then the other, clasping them together, Harry wrapping his own arm around him without a thought. "Stop worrying. If I feel like I'm pushing myself too hard, or getting tired, I will know when to stop."

"I know." Harry dipped his head, so that his forehead was against Draco's. He tugged at the button on his collar idly, one arm around his back. "I know. I'm the one that's scared."

"I'm here." Draco smoothed a thumb over his brow, under his eye. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

"Okay," Harry whispered.

Draco kissed him, hard enough to bob his head back. His head was tilted slightly, half-lidded eyes lowered to meet Harry's. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


Nearing the end of November, Draco was healthier and better, eating well and warm and energised. He was picking up his violins, and re-enrolled into his potions classes, and rejoining his charity organisation. He was going around outside, visiting the people he loved, receiving them into their drawing room. 

They found that the bond was hardly much of a presence anymore, after getting what it wanted, because they could stay away from each other for hours without it acting up now, but he'd made such a habit of being close to Draco that he felt strange without him anyway. Finding Draco at home once they'd returned from visits to their families, kissing each other and putting their hands under each other's shirt to get at skin, told Harry he wasn't the only one, the two of them laughing in a bashful amusement into each other's lips.

It was with a strange sort of unease as well as liberation that Harry realised, now, after years, he and Draco could do anything they wanted with their days, without worry or concern, without having to be so close to each other all the time. It was simultaneously a great relief, and yet, a bit of a nerve-wracking, drastic change at this point. But eventually, they did get used to it again.

At night, whenever Harry got home, he went up first thing to see him, and often found him fallen asleep with a book on his chest and the lamp on _—_ which meant that he'd been trying to stay awake to see him _—_ and Harry would kiss him on the cheek, about to stand up straight, until Draco would stir and open his eyes and see him, saying his name and mumbling a sleepy greeting as he tried to sit upright. Harry would kiss him softly, a hand curled beside his head, murmuring a _hello_ , _goodnight. Go back to sleep. I'll be up with you in a bit._

Harry had decided to take up volunteering work instead of going back to his shop. He had no real plans, and that was alright with him. He would go wherever he was taken, and figure out where he fit most. Where he wanted to be. Because his life did not have to be condensed into a single, grand plan or meaning and passion. It could just be full of small plans and meanings and passions until he wanted to move on to something else. Draco said he was lucky to be able to afford this luxury and freedom, and he could use it if he liked, and he could do good in the world with what he had alongside it. Harry had already given away a good amount of his wealth to organisations that would better the world, but he did still have enough to last him a long while.

"You could go to art school, open a gallery," Draco suggested, once, while they were talking about it at night in bed, Harry with his head on a pillow atop Draco's middle while he was reading a book.

"I don't think I'm really that good at it," Harry said.

"You're quite good," Draco said, a hand absently playing with Harry's hair, massaging at the nape of his neck. Harry's brows jumped up, surprised. He looked down at him, smirking. "I really did like all those paintings you made of my face."

"Are you sure you're not just biased because it's _your_ face?"

Draco splayed a palm all over his grinning face, making a face at him. Harry laughed, shaking it off himself. He entwined their hands together, settled the tangle of them on his own chest.

"But it's not like people will come in for my art alone anyway."

"So you don't have to work so hard. How sad." Harry stared up at him. Draco sighed. "You can have it in the muggle world, then, can't you? Nobody holds you on a high hippogriff there."

It was something to consider, for Harry, though he still doubted he was skilled enough to have them hung up on walls for the world to see. But the more he considered it, the more he found himself liking the idea.

Draco was still pulling a hand over his hair, pushing through his curls. Harry could feel the tug of his warm fingers, where they carefully broke through tangles.

"I like this," Harry said. Draco hummed, inquisitive. "Being… you know, touched. Being so comfortable with it, with you."

"Not usually so?"

"I mean, I like it. When others do it. But I always feel a bit like I don't know how to react. So I just go a bit still, like if I move, I'll make it weird."

"I'm quite used to it. My mother's always been excessively affectionate. And Slytherins were all a physical lot, so… I grew up fairly comfortable."

"Really?" Harry asked, brows raised.

Draco hummed. "Not your Gryffindors?"

"No more than typical," Harry said.

"What of your relatives?"

"With my cousin, sure. Not with me."

Draco frowned, looking at him as he moved his book a little out of the way. "Why not with you?"

Harry shrugged. "They just didn't want to." A memory came to mind, and he snorted. "I remember… when I was about...four, maybe five... my aunt would sit beside the tub and give me all these instructions on bathing myself, right? And every time she would have to correct me, she would — I'm not joking — she would touch me like this." He poked Draco's hand with the very tips of his fingers, and his breaths trembled on a laugh. But Draco wasn't laughing, and his hand had gone still in Harry's hair. "What?"

"She…" Draco shook his head slightly "you were giving yourself a bath when you were _four_?"

Harry was looking at him, wondering if what he said might have sounded very odd and abnormal, which he supposed it did, going by the faint line between Draco's brows, the way he was looking back at him. He'd been doing everything for himself since he was four, and it felt so normal to him that he sometimes forgot it wasn't quite normal for everybody else. "I'm… I mean, I'm quite alright with it. I'd say it was better than my aunt giving my cousin a bath until he was like, eight."

Draco was very silent, looking down at him. "They didn't take care of you very well, did they?"

"I wasn't their son," Harry told him. "They didn't have to."

  
  


* * *

  
  


The following day, Draco took his hand and dragged him into the bathroom, where a bath was readied.

In the tub full of soapy water up to their middle, the two of them stripped of clothes, Draco was putting the shampoo bottle aside and leaning forward on his knees. He was digging into Harry's curls, lathering it thoroughly, his soapy hands careful and gentle as they rubbed across his scalp, massaged his head.

"Tell you a secret?" Draco said, smiling slightly.

Harry hummed, affirmative, unspeakably relaxed where he leaned back against the tub. He was stuck on Draco's face, sure that all his soppy feelings were coming through: his heart, an aching swell in his chest, in his throat. Not that he was trying very hard to keep it off his face. Draco was so busy and focused on what he was doing that he didn't see it.

"I hated your hair so much in school," Draco said. "Because — "

"That's not really a secret," Harry said, laughing. "You made fun of it like, all the time."

"It's not like _you_ didn't make fun of mine either. Shut up and let me finish," Draco said, pushing a soapy, foamy hand at his shoulder, then back again in his hair. "I hated it because it was unfair, how good you looked with that mess of a bird's nest atop your head. The fact that you wouldn't even bother combing it! And then there were _normal_ people, who had to spend hours and hours gelling it up to get it to look right. Salazar, it made me so angry—"

"I love you," Harry said, very softly, and Draco went quiet, looking down at his face. It was very close to his own. His mouth quirked, in that way he only ever smiled at Harry with. He looked back to what he was doing, running his hands through Harry's hair. All tender hands and damp hair, that light apostrophe smile mellowing his cheeks. 

"Do you know why I was so angry at you?" Draco asked. He glanced at Harry's, quick, perhaps seeing Harry's uncertainty. "You thought it was because you pushed the alteration on me. But I was, more than anything, angry at the cost of being in love with you."

Harry swallowed hard. "I'm sorry."

"No. Let me finish, Harry. So... then I had thought I could make myself not feel anything for you at all, and hate you, and take my life back. Only, that isn't quite how that works and…" Draco's voice trailed off. He was now moving on to soaping Harry's body, his shoulders and chest and back. His voice went quieter as he said, "And you were just so lovely. And good. And I realised, that day I saw how you were with my mother... I realised then that there was no way that I couldn't love you."

Harry was watching him, head tilted up. He didn't know what to say.

"Close your eyes," Draco said. Harry did, so Draco could wash his hair. "Your relatives...they were fools. They were fools because they couldn't cherish somebody who needed nothing to become good and kind, because that was just what he was."

Later, in their clothes again, Draco was sitting before him at Harry's feet, between his knees, towelling his hair for him. It was all getting into Harry's face. He tossed the front of the towel over Draco's head after, covering the two of them, kissed him under it.

"Thank you," Harry murmured, the movement of it on Draco's lips, smiling into it. Draco huffed a small, amused laugh, took his face and kissed him again, heads bobbing together. 

"I'm going to take such good care of you," Draco whispered to him, hands featherlight on his cheeks.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


That night, laid facing each other on the bed, he told Draco all of it — the way he grew up, locked away in cupboards and starving through nights for missed chores or retaliations, treated like a child slave. How it felt to be unwanted until Ron and Hermione and all his friends, who were the only family he ever had, who had given him everything without letting him feel like he had to be deserving of it.

But there had still been a time, through their younger years, when he'd felt as if he had spent so long watching from the outside that maybe he got stuck there somehow. Even when he _knew_ they loved him, even when they showed so blatantly that they did, it seemed to dry up in a moment of loneliness and doubt, and he was left feeling like the same boy locked inside a cupboard, like he could vanish right there in the dark and nobody would ask.

"You make me feel real," Harry whispered to him, the warmth of Draco's cheek on the back of his own hand, watching him press a kiss to it. 

"Do you still feel that way a lot? With your family?"

"Not a lot. Just… you know. When things are bad, and they get busy and I isolate myself without realising I'm doing it again. Like it all comes back. But not anymore — they make sure I don't, whenever they can."

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Harry was just turning into the drawing room when he halted, hearing Hermione's voice.

"You don't have to leave everytime we come around," she was saying. "I mean, I'm… I would be alright if you stayed with us."

"You really don't have to say that just because—" Draco said.

"I'm saying that because you love Harry," Hermione interrupted. "And Harry loves you. I mean, he _really_ loves you. I can try to understand why."

There was the rough sound of Ron awkwardly clearing his throat.

"And I'm very glad you're okay," Hermione continued. 

"Yeah," Ron said, very uncomfortably.

"Thank you," Draco said, though it was rather delayed. He cleared his throat.

Harry walked inside only then. "Hello," he said in general, moving over to kiss Draco chastely on the lips. Draco seemed a bit dazed by it, flicking a glance over at Ron and Hermione.

That night, he spent dinner with three of his favourite people together in the same room, for the very first time. Though it was initially strange and uneasy, eventually, like a tense muscle relaxing, it began to fall away when they touched upon a common topic with Draco — charity organisations and causes with Hermione, and Quidditch with Ron.

Christmas came around nearly two weeks later, and the party was, as with every year, held at the Burrows. The Malfoys were invited as well, both Draco and Narcissa, who Draco said was uncertain about it at first, but ultimately gave in to Andromeda's insistence.

Draco picked out a nice pair of clothes for Harry and buttoned up his coat and wrapped his scarf around his neck. He brushed up Harry's hair from the front with his fingers, gelled it up a bit into something more deliberate and artful. Harry encircled his arms around his lower back as he did that, loosened quickly when Draco swatted at him to stay still and let him work, and when Draco did kiss him on the lips at the end of it, finally, they couldn't seem to stop.

"Harry, we should—" Draco said, words half-formed between kisses, amused. 

"Stop before all this comes off again?" Harry asked, stopping, laughing, and Draco huffed too, noses and foreheads pressed together. He was watching his own fingers play with the button of his collar, in the little space between them. Harry tilted his chin up quickly, gave his lips a hard kiss again. "Stop looking like that then."

Harry brought his camera along, and was taking a wide view of the entire room and everybody in it, all the golden fairy lights and a lovely Christmas tree — there, Draco with his mother, Andromeda and Molly, the four of them in a circle of conversation. There, George with Angelina and Luna and Teddy. Ginny had come up to him, which he only realised when he turned with the camera onto her face, her freckles magnified in the grainy, dim quality of the viewer.

"Is that your Draco camera?"

"My…?" Harry paused, frowning. "Hang on. What do _you_ know about my—"

"Everybody knows about your Draco camera, Harry." Ginny grinned cheekily, her hands folded behind her. She was in her blue Weasley sweater. Everybody in the room was, outside of the Malfoys. "Draco showed Luna all the pictures of those places you two went through, and Luna told me the camera was mostly just full of pictures of him, and some recent ones of you taken by him, I suppose."

"Is there anything she doesn't tell you?"

"Nope. So, tell me, Harry, the rest of the view in those places was probably just background, wasn't it? Or, should I say, _Draco_ was the view, and those bloody Pyramids of Giza were just in the way."

"Nice," Harry said dryly.

"She also said there were many recent pictures of his sleeping face."

"You're making that sound really creepy by saying it out loud."

"Hmm, well, it's not creepy _now_ , when you're together. It's cute. Luna takes pictures of me napping all the time."

On another moment, there was Draco, with Hermione on one side of him, and Luna leaning her head on his shoulder, Ginny leaning into her. He was showing the three of them through the camera, which did have Harry feeling very strange and a little like he wanted to snatch it off his hands. He kept himself in check, busied with helping Molly set the table alongside George and Ron.

"Oh, I've always wanted to go there!" Hermione said, a deeply wistful expression of her face as she glanced up at Draco, back down at the camera. "It's so beautiful."

"I'll take you there one day, if you'd like," Draco said, looking up at her, the camera between his hands. He sounded sincere. Harry knew he was.

"Would you really?" Hermione said, smiling.

"Of course," Draco said. He put his hand with the camera down to his lap and put his arm around Luna.

"Hey, what about me?" Ginny said, bouncing excitedly on the couch. "Are you ever going to take me to see that grand Quidditch museum in Sweden?"

"What am I now, your tourist Thestral carriage?"

Through dinner, Harry was sitting beside Draco, holding his hand under the table. He could feel the cool metal of Draco's ring on his skin. Half-way through listening to Arthur's story about the accidental animation of a rubber goose that turned out horrifically aggressive, Harry found himself distracted by their hands, and the gleam of silver amidst the tangle. While Draco was still listening to the story, Harry pulled their hands up and gently kissed the ring.

 _I'm married_ , Harry thought to him, and smiled, when Draco's attention broke away from Arthur's story and he looked at him. _I'm married to you_. Draco slanted a small smile at him, kissed him chastely, quietly, in the midst of chatter and stolen attention.

Afterwards, Harry recorded the room again, roving slowly upon every person there, and zoomed onto Draco, speaking to Molly, as he helped her clean up the table alongside Ron, caught Molly's full-bodied laughter, tapping Draco's cheek as he was turning to carry the dishes towards the kitchen.

Near the end of the night, Andromeda had gone home with Teddy, and George and Angelina had also left early. The rest of them all danced to Christmas songs on the wireless — Arthur with Molly, spinning her around until they grew tired and sat down. Ginny with Luna, arms fully wrapped around each other's necks and shoulders, and Ron with Hermione, smiling and murmuring with their faces close, whilst Narcissa sat in the corner uneasily but smiled too much. Harry had asked her for a dance to try not to let her feel excluded or bored or uneasy, and she'd taken him up for it, but sat down eventually after a while, and told Harry to go pull her son up by the hand and into a dance instead. She left not long after, with a general farewell, a handshake with Molly, a kiss to Draco's cheek, a touch to Harry's face and a smile.

When Draco got visibly tired and low, which he still did whenever he pushed himself too hard, they sat down on the couch, and Harry let him lay his head on his collarbone, nestle against him with arm around Harry's bicep, and doze off a little as the party went on. Harry put up a Muffliatio spell to keep the music and chatter out, and held him, stroking his hair gently.

"Do you want to go home now?" Harry asked, when he awoke a half an hour later.

Draco nodded, drowsy. Harry helped him up to his feet, and announced a general farewell on both their behalf to everybody as he took his husband by the hand. Then, after they got all of it back, they went home.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


In the euphoric affection, after sex, Draco was tracing his fingers over Harry's lips, hair all mussy and damp with sweat. He had a smirk, all contented leisure and allure, a silver of his tongue between teeth as he followed the pad of his finger over Harry's mouth, mouthing the syllables of his own name. _Dray,_ on his upper lip, _co_ , on his lower lip.

"I like that," Draco whispered, a breath coming down from bliss. "The way you say my name."

"Yeah?" 

Draco hummed, affirmative and soft.

Harry murmured his name against his fingers again, smiled onto it.

It was when Harry had laid down next to him, shifting under covers, that he heard, softly, "My love." 

Harry's head lifted, sudden, at that. He found Draco's face, mellow and bare with a raw emotion, in a way that made him look years younger. It made Harry's heart throb in his throat, and he scooted closer, kissed him softly.

It must have been somewhere through this that they landed on the conversation they did. Draco was insistent and adamant he was not one for pet names, that he was far more sophisticated than to need somebody to call him by anything other than his own name, and Harry ignored it all and began listing down whatever came to mind to see what he liked, even through Draco's protests, until he sighed, exasperated, and began to respond.

"Honey?"

"Overly saccharine," Draco dismissed. 

"Babe," Harry said, squinting, half-certain Draco might accept this one.

Draco seemed to consider it, at the very least, before his nose wrinkled and he decided, "No."

"...Dear?"

"That's for old and grey people, like your Weasley parents."

Harry smiled at that. Then, repressed it back, pulling his mouth straight. "Nutter butter?"

Draco, as expected, grimaced in abject disgust, slightly wide-eyed, and went to say, "Actually, do you know, I did say my name was just enough—"

"Sweetheart," Harry cut him off, half-laughing, and Draco stopped short at that. Harry smiled, a slow bloom, teetering on a soft grin. "Yeah?"

Draco kissed him, pressed close to him, all hot and tender. Their legs were tangled together, comfortably. "I'm still not one for pet names," he said, with a lazy smirk and a half-grin. "But you make it sound good."

Harry laughed.

A while after, Harry checked the time. It was almost eight. They'd been in bed together for about an hour. 

"We should get up," Harry said, Draco humming behind him in agreement. He kissed Draco on the mouth again, and got up. He had to be at the St. Mungos pediatric ward soon, where he would polyjuice into well-liked public figures and book characters, or just remain as himself if wanted, and visit the children. Draco would have his classes in about an hour.

Harry untangled himself out of bedsheets, finding his pants and trousers on the floor by the door. 

When he turned around, it was to the sight of Draco on his back, his head near the edge of the bed, about hanging off of it. In his hands, up high over his own face, was the camera turned backward, blatantly recording Harry in all his bare-arsed, naked glory. Draco rolled over to his stomach, until his elbows were on the mattress, flipping the camera between his fingers back upright. He was smirking, his brow cocked, legs amidst white sheets, clad in pants and Harry's pale blue shirt.

Harry yelped, quickly putting his trousers up in front of himself. "What are you—did you just try to take a picture of my—" 

Draco was laughing at the viewer, soundless, his chest and shoulders moving with it. "It's on video, if you really should know. So I didn't just _try_."

Harry quickly left the room, pulled his pants on there, and then made for him back inside. "Delete it!" he exclaimed. 

"No!" 

Draco rolled off the bed quickly before Harry could get him, skirting around the bed as Harry tried to corner him. It resulted in a whole chase around the room, Harry making sure he was always in the way of the door. They were both laughing stupidly like children half-way through it, and when Draco tried to escape again by climbing onto the bed, Harry caught him from behind, the two of them tussling as Harry tried to get at the camera and Draco held it high and far out of his reach, one hand gripping Harry's arm around his waist, still caught in the uncontrollable fit of his gleeful mischief.

"What if it gets in the wrong hands!" Harry was saying, slightly wild and frantic, trying to pull him down and tugging at his arm. "Somebody like Skeeter would have a field day with—"

"As if I would let anybody have their eyes on _my_ husband's — "

Harry did finally manage to pull him down, get him flat on his back to the bed, grinning above him as he kissed him. Draco's breaths were still hitching on his laughter, and the camera was still in his hand, recording, forgotten into the kiss.

It was only when Draco's body relaxed, his hand loosening around the camera, that Harry broke the kiss and snatched it out of his hands, wrist twisted to hold it behind his back. He was still keeping himself on an arm over Draco, hand beside his head.

Draco raised his brows, unconcerned and cool. "For the record, I _let_ you have it back."

"You're mad, you know that?" Harry told him, with a huff. Draco bounced his brows at him, smirking. Harry broke into another laugh, and then sank down onto that hot mouth again, closing into daylight between them.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


They were sitting by the fireplace, comfortable and warm from the winter cold, the two of them fairly drunk in celebration of New Years Eve. Draco had been playing around a bit with wandless magic, gold embers forming shapes in the firelight, still a little fizzly, but they could see it coming back. He'd been humming something to himself for the last few minutes, slightly croaky as that of somebody inebriated and hazy.

"What're you humming?" Harry murmured into his cheek, wrapped around him.

Draco stopped humming. His brows jumped, even with his eyes closed. He was settled between Harry's socked feet planted onto the settee, hand curled around the neck of the empty bottle they'd been sharing.

"Muggle song," Draco mumbled. "French. You wouldn't know."

"I want to know." 

Draco opened his eyes, drowsy, his magic dissipating away. He shifted his head a little on his shoulder, lolling slightly, looking up at him. He smirked, his gaze woozy and mellow and fixated, very closely, onto his own. "Hm. Maybe I'll serenade you."

Harry snorted a soft, drunken laugh into Draco's jaw, where he was burrowing his cold nose, as he began to sing in low murmurs, running a hand down Harry's hair, scraping light at his cheek, the side of his neck. Harry didn't understand a word of it, just liked the sound of his voice, that he was singing for him, smiling into a kiss on Draco's neck. He could see the canines of Draco's quiet, sweetly tipsy grin, still looking up at Harry closely. His nail traced the line of Harry's jaw, pulling his face closer with a press, lips onto his.

 _Alors je sens en moi_ , Draco whispered into his mouth, only just louder than the crackle of fire, and the rest of it, _mon coeur qui bat—_ fading, quieting softly into the kiss.

_I feel inside me_

_My heart beating_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! 
> 
> Thank you so much to everybody for sharing their thoughts, for all the lovely comments in the last chapter 💙
> 
> References:  
> La Vie En Rose by Edith Piaf


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a scene dealing with dissociation, allusions to past homophobia (by the Dursleys)

**A YEAR LATER**

Harry was tracing his fingers very lightly around the shape of Draco's nose, his mouth, his eyes. Stroking his thumb over his brow. 

"What are you doing?" Draco asked, sleepily frowning.

"Sorry," Harry said, quickly, removing his fingers. "Sorry. Go back to sleep."

"But what are you doing?"

"Outlining," Harry said. He didn't always get him fully right in his paintings. 

"Why, making another painting of me?" Draco said, a small, amused smirk at a corner of his mouth.

"I'll be making paintings of you the rest of my life now."

Draco stopped at that, seemed to have woken fully at that. His mouth was parted slightly, staring at him. Harry realised, only then, what he'd said. Was it too much?

"I… I mean..."

Draco kissed him, and then kissed him and kissed him until they were rolling a little, Draco on top of him and Harry fully on his back, taking every one of them against his mouth with as much speed and ferocity, and then he was laughing a bit between each one, pulling Draco in even closer onto his body with an arm. 

But then everything Draco still didn't know had cast a gloom over him, when Draco had taken his arm and wrapped it around himself as he shifted over onto his side and let Harry push his mouth into the nape of his neck, breathe him in, falling back asleep for another hour or two. 

What would happen after a year? Would Draco still want him, if he learned of everything Harry had kept hidden from him?

Merlin knew he couldn't tell Draco now.

Merlin knew he could never bear the fear of losing him ever again.

Harry kissed his back, right between his shoulder blades, trying not to think about it.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  


In June of 2002, a summer party that took place at their own flat, Hermione proposed to Ron in front of all their friends and family.

She had proposed a toast at the dinner table, looking quite lovely. 

"Ronald Bilius Weasley," she said, smiling, a crinkle in her eyes. She took the ring out, grinning widely at Ron's wide-eyed, bald shock. "Marry me and I'll watch all your terrible morning shows with you the rest of our lives."

Nobody knew what had him looking like that, exactly, once it had gone on too long for it to be the usual surprise. Harry had begun to think that it wasn't a good thing, how long the lack of further reaction went on, though he couldn't remember at all any trouble between them. George was taking a sip of his drink, awkward. Draco was clearing his throat next to him, leaning slightly away from Harry to murmur something to Ginny next to him, her making a noise of alarmed agreement.

And then Ron reached into his pocket and took out a box himself, breaking into a shaky laugh as he held it up, still half-shocked. And the room broke into a laugh right along with him, a raucous full of applause and whoops from several people, Harry grinning so hard his cheeks hurt.

"You beat me to it," Ron said. He was getting up from his seat, hands held up to take her into his arms. "I had a whole bloody speech ready, 'Mione. Oh my bloody Hell—"

Hermione grinned, taking his arms and pulling him in towards her and clasping her arms around his neck, saying, "Well, you should've been a moment faster." They kissed chastely on the lips before he hugged her waist, laughing again into her shoulder. 

"Can I still say my speech?" Ron said, when they drew back, not entirely letting go. "I'm still going to say it. I've been practicing for _ages_ in front of the bathroom mirror."

"About bloody time," Harry said, huffing, glancing over at Draco. They were watching Hermione slide the ring onto Ron's finger, Ron doing the same for her. "They've been together for, what, six years now?"

"Boring," Draco scoffed, clapping lightly.

As a wedding gift, Harry painted for them a portrait, Hermione in the ethereal white dress she would wear, Ron in the fancy, dark robes Draco and Ginny helped pick out. It was one of Harry's best works yet, because he spent weeks on it, paying close attention to every detail. 

Even Draco was visibly impressed upon seeing it, seeming to struggle for words, and then saying, finally, "You really should have your own gallery some day."

Harry's face bloomed into a broad grin at that. Then he grabbed Draco's wrist, still sat on the stool, and pulled him down on his lap, into a kiss.

Ron and Hermione loved it, the two of them unable to look away from it.

"It's so beautiful, Harry," she breathed out, reaching for Harry and pulling him into a hug. Harry gripped her back, smiling into her shoulder. She kissed his cheek before she let him go. Ron came next, hugging him tightly, saying with a shite-eating grin, "you're the best best man I could ask for."

It was an outdoor, autumn wedding, dry red leaves by trees and a cool breeze that played up Hermione's veil and dress full of pretty, silver embroidery, Ron's heavily decorated robes over a formal suit. It was as beautiful as the two of them were.

Everybody placed bets on who would cry first, or more, and most of them did bet on Ron, and they were right, because Ron looked at Hermione as she was walking down the aisle like he could hardly believe, even years later, that he was lucky enough to have her. But he mixed up the word, _my_ and _lawfully_ and ended up saying _malfully—wally—_ and the two of them laughed so hard they could hardly speak any more, Hermione snickering uncontrollably into Ron's shoulder, and it took them forever to calm down and say their vows.

The rings were exchanged, and they stepped forward, Hermione with her arms around Ron's neck, kissing each other hard.

It was in the midst of the loud and hard applause, Harry perhaps clapping the hardest, that he glanced over at Draco, grinning like a loon, and saw the look on his face. He was clapping, but there was a strange and wistful sort of look to the hint of his smile, the tilt to his head. Harry's grin faded a little, looking at him. Draco must have noticed, a little while later, looking back at Harry quietly in the midst of the chaos, his face smoothing, brows raising in question. Harry smiled at him, in the way he did only for him, shaking his head.

At the reception party, after the dinner and Harry's best man speech (through which Ron began to weep again), Harry had taken Draco to dance as well, Draco leading it. He brushed his fingers at Draco's hairline.

"Alright, sweetheart?"

Draco hummed, inquisitive. He appeared bemused. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be?" Harry eyed him, scrutinising, and he sighed. He mindlessly adjusted Harry's glasses on his face, sliding it straight, one-handed. "It's alright. I was only thinking how… strange it is, I suppose… that we won't be having anything like this. Isn't it strange?"

Harry stroked his thumb at his jaw. "Yeah. I suppose it is."

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


October was when Harry crossed paths with his childhood again.

He was at a jewellery shop in muggle London, one that Hermione had suggested, delighted, when Harry had told her his plans. The lady on the other side of the counter was telling him about the one he was eying inside the glass—it was silver, with intricate carvings that met at moonstone jewel, pretty swirls of a border around it.

The lady behind the counter was swiping his card. Harry was reaching at his back pocket to push in all his change and keys back, making sure nothing fell out, when he heard her say, "Is that him?"

Harry looked at her, and then down where she was looking. The picture in his wallet, where it was still gripped in his hand, resting atop the counter. It was just a candid of Draco, laughing under the sunshine and wind tousling up his hair, unaware of the attention on him.

"Your fiance?" she asked, with a raised brow.

"My…" Harry smiled slightly, tasting the sweet word that came in his mouth, the way it felt to think of Draco with it. "My husband, actually."

Her face smoothed, mouth parting in an 'o', as if she understood, even though she might not have entirely understood why he was buying such an awfully expensive ring, the kind that would usually be purchased exclusively for proposals or weddings. "A present for him, then?"

'You can say. Um… our… wedding…was not very…" Harry searched for a word. He cleared his throat. There was a lot packed into that, that he obviously couldn't say. "conventional. Or… or nice, really. So I just… I don't want us to stay stuck in that, you know? I want him to have something good to replace that with, and to make up for it. And I can tell he wants… he wanted more. So did I. Can't be a wedding now, but maybe a proper proposal, at least, and a reception party."

"Aw," the lady mouthed, sympathetic and endeared. She smiled at him kindly as she was finishing up with the transaction. "Well, best wishes to the both of you, and I am very sure he will love the surprise."

Harry thanked her, smiling, taking the card back from her and sliding it back into his wallet. He folded it back up one-handed and pushed it into his pocket, picking up the fancy bag.

He was just on the verge of leaving, when he heard a voice behind him in the midst of low chatter, saying, "Harry?"

He didn't recognise it at first. He only connected the voice to a face when he turned, saw who it was.

"Jesus," he said, with a hushed laugh. "Harry, is that really you?"

He was older. Of course he was, nearly six years later. He had a trimmed beard, and a round belly, and a healthy flush in his cheeks. There was a little girl in his arms. She looked just like him.

It took him a while to get his voice back again, and say, "Big D." The carefulness of keeping his voice even, his expression casual, came through. "Surprise seeing you here."

"Yeah," Dudley said, and smiled, tentatively, in a way that was hard to reconcile him with the boy that used to beat him into the sand of a park. "You too."

Harry's gaze slid over to the little girl in his arms.

"My daughter," Dudley said, when he saw that. He looked at her. "Emelie. Emelie, say hi. This is your… your uncle, Harry."

Emelie grinned in excited delight, eyes lighting, as if she recognised him somehow. "Oh, Uncle Harry! Hello!" She must be around four years old, still replacing _r_ sounds with _w_. She was holding her small hand out for him to shake. 

Dudley spoke to him normally, as if old acquaintances. He asked him who the bag was for, and Harry told him it was for his spouse. Dudley was telling him that the bag in his own hand was for his wife too, that it was her birthday, and Emelie told Harry that she was the one that picked it out, smiling broadly at him, and Harry smiled back at her.

"Then it must be wonderful, I'm sure," Harry said to her. Emelie beamed.

Dudley told him, with a quieter hesitance, that he'd wanted to invite him for their wedding, but he didn't know where to find him, or if Harry would even accept it. The last part, he said with a nervous sort of laughter. Harry wasn't saying a lot back, and he supposed that did make him nervous.

He remembered his cousin's last words to him, saying, _I don't think you're a waste of space_ , the way he'd looked almost apprehensively back at him as he got in the car, like somebody just dangling on becoming this person, and coming back years later as him.

"Right. Well," Harry said, looking down at the bag in his hand. He just wanted to go home, see Draco again, have dinner with him and kiss him before bed. "I suppose I should—"

"Do you want to come over for dinner?" Dudley said, a little blurted out. There was only silence.

"Please, Uncle Harry," Emelie said, then, clapping her hands together and putting them on her cheeks, her chin, as if to express excitement. "It'll be so fun! And maybe you can teach me some of your magic tricks, and you can tell me all about the wizards and witches, and the magic school— " She rambled a bit.

 _Maybe later,_ he wanted to say. He wanted to give whatever excuse he could not to.

"All right," he ended up saying, looking only at Emelie, with a slight smile.

Dudley drove them to his home in his car, uneasily trying to fill the silence with stories of Emelie at school, with how he met his wife, Olivia, with where he'd gone to university and what he was working as, an industrial technician. He was asking Harry questions, then, where had he been, what had been going on with him, and Harry didn't really know how to tell him much of where he'd been and what had gone on with him anyway, so he just said, "Nothing much. I've been around." 

"I'm glad you're uh… you know. That you're okay." He seemed to wait for something there. He nodded, cleared his throat, awkward. A moment later, "So, um… What do you do? What field are you in, in… in the magical world? I've been reading a bit on that, so I know the stuff you guys do. It's… it's really interesting."

"Have you ever worked with dragons?" Emelie asked from the backseat.

"I'm not really doing anything." Harry turned to look at Emelie. "I haven't, but I have a friend who does. They're just as you think, fire-breathing, larger than life." 

Dudley huffed an awed sort of chuckle. Emelie was dragging out a _woooow_ , beautified.

"When did you and your wife get married? How did you two meet?" Dudley asked, always two questions at once. Harry didn't correct his assumption. He didn't think he could really be bothered to deal with whatever can of worms that would open.

"That's a really long story," Harry said. His breath hitched with amusement to himself, looking out the faded reflection of himself on the window, thinking of Draco and their _really_ long story through the rest of the drive. Thinking of when they were eleven and thirteen and fifteen, and everything that had happened after that they never could have foreseen then. Dudley had, perhaps, taken the hint, and stopped asking him anything.

* * *

His home was a yellow suburban house, not much different from what it'd been at Privet Drive, only in a different location. There were two people in his living room when he was turning into the room next to Dudley, who had halted in his steps. There was a young woman, who Harry assumed would be Olivia, who stood as she saw the two of them.

And there was his aunt Petunia.

"Mum," Dudley said, throwing Harry a quick, uncomfortable glance after a fair amount of delay. "I didn't know you'd be here."

"I didn't know I needed an invitation to visit my family," Petunia said. She smiled, thin, and her eyes slid over to Harry. Her face fell, right there.

Harry pretended he didn't notice the two of them going out into the corridor, that he didn't hear the sound of their voices, a low, whispering argument.

Olivia was lovely, treated Harry with utmost hospitality, care and kindness. She was telling him, in a loud voice from the kitchen, how she had met Dudley, spinning a funny story out of how she'd given him a piece of her mind for spilling coffee on her. They'd married young, at nineteen, when she got pregnant with Emelie. Dudley was overly kind too, in a nearly anxious sort of way. At some point, Vernon had come up. He'd died of a heart attack two years ago. Petunia was seemingly fine with Emelie, not entirely amicable and open with Olivia, distant and tense for the most part. 

"Excuse me," Harry said, just before dinner, thinking about Draco, who would already be done with dinner by now. He would be waiting up for him, as he always did, with a book and a light on. "I have to make a call."

But he didn't have a phone or anything. He just had his wand. Olivia directed him into the kitchen for privacy, and Harry went.

He conjured a Patronus. His mind felt foggy and slow. He had to try a bit harder to feel a memory with Draco, and then his stag came out, flew through a wall. When he turned, Dudley was standing in the doorway, having come back from washing his hands in the loo across the corridor.

"I… my husband, I had to…" Harry was saying, trying to explain in a habit long forgotten and left behind, rising back to the surface. He was six and eight and ten again, after his magic had gone off in an explosion of his emotions, trying to explain to his aunt and uncle, apologising over and over. He realised then what he'd said, thought of Vernon's long-winded rants about _homosexuals_ , Petunia and Dudley's disgust, his own desperately denied crush on a boy in second grade. Harry stared him right in the eye, coldly. "I wanted to let my husband know that I'd be late."

Dudley nodded. That was all he did. He just looked uncomfortable. "Yeah. Okay."

There was an odd sort of silence after that.

"Emelie, you know," Dudley said. He swallowed, hard, crossed his arms over his chest uneasily. "She's magic too. Just like… just like you."

Harry's brows furrowed. 

Dudley swallowed again. "It started showing up when she was one. I was at my parents' with her, when I was just getting good with them again. They didn't want Olivia over. You can imagine they weren't exactly glad about us being teenage parents." He paused. "They screamed at her too, you know. Like they used to at you. When she moved one of her toys from one place to another. She was so fucking shaken, and I picked her up and got out of there and I never went back. Not until dad died, and mum got lonely enough that she was willing to do anything to have me back. But they were awful about her for years."

From the other room, he could hear Emelie's shriek of laughter, the vague sound of Petunia's voice. Olivia was carrying her across the corridors, towards the loo to get Emelie's hands washed, laughing too.

"I'm so sorry," Dudley said, his voice such a rasp it was almost a whisper.

Harry didn't feel much on hearing the apology, or on anything right now really, and he could only take this as forgiveness, as having moved on. "Water under the bridge," he said. He'd said the same thing to Draco, but right now, he just felt numb and off-kilter.

He was numb and off-kilter all through the dinner, slipped in and out of the conversations at the table and hardly spoke, as if his mind had detached and he had retreated somewhere deeper within it and now he was watching himself in the middle of everything else. He was numb and off-kilter through finding himself standing at the door, shaking Emelie's little hand, and Olivia's, and Dudley's, who was asking him if he needed a drive, and Harry was telling him he didn't need a drive, and Dudley was asking him if he was sure, and Harry was sure, yes. Dudley was handing him his number, _if you ever want to keep in touch_ , he said. He'd almost forgotten the ring he bought for Draco on their coffee table until Olivia suddenly remembered, went inside and got it for him.

Harry walked to the closest Apparition point, turned into every crack of it until he was outside of Grimmauld Place, walking up the porch and to the door.

He went through the corridor and into the living room, found Draco stirring awake on the couch, at the sound of the door opening and shut. The light was on and the book had slipped out of his hands, the front flat onto his own belly, and when his bleary eyes landed on Harry, he smiled, all tired and in his lavender night robes.

He was still numb and off-kilter, his heart strangely heavy and low in his chest, and it was only when Draco's smile faded into a faint furrow between his brows that Harry realised he must not look very good. Draco was sitting up, with a push onto his elbow, sliding off the couch to his feet. He was standing as he was pulling the book off himself and placing it aside on the table, moving over to him as he was asking, "Harry?"

Harry didn't entirely understand what was happening, why a tremor seemed to run down his face and shoulders, but something in him seemed to break with Draco's hands featherlight and warm on Harry's face, running his fingers over it, frowning sleepy and confused. He was whispering, _it's okay_ , _it's okay,_ letting Harry push his nose into his satin robes, a hitch and a shudder of a breath, holding him close through his underarms. Draco's hand came up, brushed light over the nape of Harry's neck, fingers resting at the base of his hair.

Draco led him over to the couch, sat him down there before he left and came back with a glass of water, kneeling down at Harry's feet as he handed it to him. 

"What happened?" Draco asked him, once he'd drank it down. He took the glass from him, put it on the table behind him, taking Harry's hand when he turned back.

Harry hunched forward, elbow on his knee, running a hand down his face. He told Draco everything about what had happened, but he didn't really understand, in the end, why he had ended up reacting the way he did, when nothing had happened at all.

"I just… I don't feel right, that's all," Harry said, hand half in his hair, a tremulous and uncertain sort of laugh. "I don't know."

"You're alright," Draco said, still holding his hand, stroking back and forth over the side of his hand, grounding him. His calm and comfort. It was a while after that he said, low, "do you know, my Mind-Healer once said that, just because something is no longer on our minds doesn't always mean our bodies don't remember."

Harry must have heard something similar from his own. "Yeah. Maybe."

Draco laid his head on his lap, and they sat like that, wordlessly, still holding hands.

"I brought something for you," Harry said, then, smiling, looking down at him.

Draco only seemed to notice the bag then, so caught up he was in taking care of him. He lifted his head, as Harry gently pulled at his hand, cuing him to come sit up beside him. Harry took the velvet box out of the bag, opened it, and picked the ring out from the slit.

"Draco Malfoy," Harry said, softly, as he held it up between them. He was tired and sad, his eyes gritty and lashes clumped, but he was smiling, warm and loved and full of love, and he wanted Draco to have everything he wanted in life. To be happy, most of all. "Will you marry me?"

Draco gave him that slight slanted smile, shaking his head as he laughed and he scooted forward, folding his arms around Harry's neck. He kissed the corner of Harry's mouth, pushing his temple against his. "Okay."

Harry grinned. He lowered his head in the little space between them to take his hand, Draco's head also lowered, watching him slide the ring into his finger. It was fitted, right above the silver band that symbolised their lack of choices, and now the moonstone gem and silver patterns that said, _this time, I'm choosing you_ . Said, _this time, we're choosing each other._ Then Draco was back to curling his arms around his neck, the back of his head, cheek against his. Harry pushed a kiss on his shoulder, nestled him closer into his own with a gentle hand at the back of his hair.

  
  


* * *

  
  


"I think I'm quite close," Draco was saying, busied and distracted. Harry watched him work, pouring vials into the cauldron, adding ingredients to it that Harry couldn't even name. "Should only be another few weeks now."

Harry's throat bobbed, subtle. He flickered a smile anyway. His chest felt tight. "That's amazing."

All he could think about were the months they still had ahead of them, before the curse would break.

Draco had been working on this for almost two years now. He'd told Harry everything about it, all the mechanics, as much as Harry could understand of the way he made it, how it would let him feel intensely his own magical core and the curse operating on it. How it would tell him what had happened to him. He'd told Harry of why he was certain that the alteration had only gone wrong for him, not Harry — the simple fact that Harry did not at all seem affected similarly by the curse in the months before they got together, when Harry had been unspeakably desperate and aching for him just as much, the curse like a clouded wall between them. Draco was… he was absolutely fucking brilliant.

But right now, that was terrifying, for Harry.

He was terrified that once Draco learned of what had happened, he would learn the rest too, everything Harry knew before he did. He was terrified of what it would do to him.

"I love you," Harry said, all out of nowhere. Draco paused, looking up at him. Harry suddenly wondered if the timing seemed off, or if it was the way he said it, if he shouldn't have said it now. He said it all the time anyway, hadn't thought it would seem so out of place.

But then Draco smiled, mild. "And I you."

 _Don't ever forget that_ , Harry thought to him. _Please._

When he was sat on the bed, closing his eyes, trying to settle the fear shrinking his heart, thinking of all the things he wanted out of desperation — to somehow stop Draco from finding out, hoping he wouldn't find out anything that could ruin him again, wishing he could change something back in time or now or swap places with—

Harry stilled. 

For a long while, he sat there, some strange sort of hope niggling at the back of his mind. 

He got up then, quickly, heading for his shelf where he kept all his books. There was a stack of books on bonding, a book full of spells related to magical cores. Maybe there _was_ something like that. There _had_ to be something like that. This was a world of magic, after all.

Harry found it over days and days of poring through books obsessively, when Draco was busy in his lab or away. 

_Exchanging the State of Magical Cores_ —it was used especially in transplantation processes. The wand movements were awfully complicated, as were the Latin words. He thought he must need Hermione's help with these, only he knew she would work out what he wanted to do, not let him do it. So he had to do it all on his own.

Harry tore the page off the book, kept it hidden in his locked drawer. 

He took it out every day, whenever Draco wasn't around and he could, to practice all the wand movements that made his arms creak and his head hurt by the end of it, trying to memorise and painstakingly pronounce right all the words with the help of a spell that made the words go green whenever they were uttered correctly, red when they weren't.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


But Harry had begun to notice the strange looks Draco gave him often, now. He had begun to notice the ways he went quiet at times. Harry never asked him what was wrong, afraid of what he would ask. What Harry would give away trying to answer, not being able to.

The reception party had been a surprise, arranged and organised over the course of months by Harry, Hermione, Ginny and Luna for quite a while now. Draco had come in through the door, in the robes Harry had bought and asked him to come wearing. He was left wide-eyed, all the decorations in full bloom, surrounded by all their loved ones.

But he was quiet there too, in that same strange mood he was often in these days.

He had caught Draco looking at him unfathomably at the dinner table, as if there was something he was trying to work out. Harry had smiled, said again, _I love you_ , and Draco had said, after a little while, smiling back in a small flicker. _I know. And I you._ Let Harry kiss him chastely on the lips.

He did seem to energise himself after that, talking and joking and dancing with everybody in the room, as if adamant about not ruining the party. But Harry could still feel that something wasn't quite right. His own mood had gone strange as well, and always now, there was that fear and desperation shrivelling up his heart. Always.

  
  


* * *

  
  


That fear and desperation eventually dredged up in his dreams as well, and Harry woke up crying out, the ghost of loss following him back into the waking world. He'd dreamed of something terrible, fragmented into his worst fears. Two silver rings on a cold hand. A headstone, and his love's name on it.

And then Draco was taking his face and drawing him back down onto bed, hushing him and saying _it's alright. It's alright_ —

"Fuck," Harry gasped out, nearly a sob, into his neck. He was grappling for him, pulling him close by the waist, trying to breathe through a terror and grief that hadn't happened, that only lived within himself. "Fuck."

In the dark of a room full and suffocating with his own sorrow, Draco was tugging him up from his neck with a grip to the sides of his hair, hands coming onto his cheeks and maneuvering his forehead onto his own as he was saying, over and over, _it's alright. I'm here. I'm right here,_ Harry's own words in his mouth, while Harry was choking horribly over him, still trembling from a vivid dream that had carved his love out of his life and left it grey. He was hearing it all from underwater, under that tsunami grief that had rattled through him in his sleep, only half out of it.

The world did focus back into Draco's voice, eventually, while his breaths were whispers against Harry's damp mouth, _you make me so happy, don't you know? You make me so happy, Harry,_ and his fingers, tender at Harry's jaw, the base of his hair. _I know you'll love me. I know you'll take care of me_ —

And Harry began to breathe, thick and watery, eyes closed. He could feel himself steadying, his body relaxing against Draco's. He could feel Draco's eyes on him, in the silence that followed, thumb on the hollow of his cheek. The way it came to wipe over a wet streak.

"My beautiful love," Draco murmured.

Harry went back to sleep, ear to the reassurance of his heartbeat, Draco's hands stroking his hair back.

  
  


* * *

  
  


In the video was a dim room set golden and alight, a study light somewhere off to the side on the desk. There was Draco drawing his hand away from the lens of the camera, scooting a little back on the chair.

"Tell you a secret?" Draco said, hands steepling together. "Perhaps one of my worst ever, I believe." 

He lowered his head, down at the desk, at something he was moving aside below the frame. 

"When I was six and listening to all those old fairytale stories, all the princes, the knights, I had always imagined me and you there instead. But then I met you, of course, and I… well, I had to repress the fact that my six year old self ever did that."

There, he said nothing for a few seconds. Whatever he'd moved aside before, he seemed to be fiddling with it a bit.

Then, Draco continued, still with his head low. "Here's another secret." His throat bobbed, his voice having gone quieter. "I don't remember at all, when or how I fell in love with you."

He made a sound, an inward sort of laugh, shaking his head slightly.

"I just—don't remember. And I think I must have always teetered somewhere on the edge of it, in some way, and I never noticed when. As if I'd just woken right in the middle of having fallen for you."

His jaw shifted, his tongue between his teeth. He was still not looking up at the camera properly, like he could already feel Harry's eyes on him through the screen, even whilst Harry had been asleep behind him at that very moment.

"My feelings for you have always been this muddled, confusing thing tangled up in a hundred other feelings, and…" There was the sound of a small scrape off-camera. "And hatred was the clearest one that I could make sense of, the way I thought about you all the time. It was quite unhealthy, I believe. The way I centred around you. Always chasing after you."

Draco paused, there, going silent for another few seconds. Harry could see him, jaw shifting slightly again, close-mouthed, in that way he did sometimes when he was contemplating.

It was then that he turned slightly, throwing a glance over his shoulder, and with it, it cleared the way of vision, and Harry could see a bit of himself, asleep on the bed underneath blankets.

Draco turned back to the camera, and looked right at him where he was, right now.

"I know you have a secret too."

And Harry's insides went cold, frozen.

"I know of the way you look at me sometimes. The page you keep hidden in your locked drawer. And now, all these nightmares you're having."

His grey eyes seemed to bore into him, then. He was sitting very still, his face unwavering.

"And I can't deny that I almost couldn't believe it when you told me — " 

He trailed off, eyes straying. His throat convulsed again, hard. 

"But I do now. Harry," Draco said, softly. "Because you make it so difficult not to believe it."

He looked back up at him, and his mouth quirked into his small, slanted smile.

"So tell me your secret, whenever you're ready, and I'll tell you that it doesn't matter. Because I know you love me, and I'll always love you."

  
  
**FIN**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a summary of what went wrong with the bond, in case somebody didn't understand (I know it's all very weird and complicated, and even worse and vague that it's just one POV):
> 
> Basically, the alteration (a sort of surgical procedure that was meant to 'alter' the curse so as to cut it down from its total lifespan of 25 years to 5) went wrong for Draco in that it was redirected more towards him, less towards Harry. This puts Draco's life at risk because the greater intensity of the curse lets negative emotions between him and Harry affect him (when it didn't before)
> 
> Harry wasn't allowed to tell him because to do so would base any further developments in their relationship on something artificial (the two of them would be /forced/ to get along under duress, which is hard to emotionally connect with, I imagine, so wouldn't work anyway)
> 
> So Draco was being affected by his negative emotions, and he was in love with Harry. Because of the pain of unrequited love, it wasn't enough for them to be on friendly terms, as Harry was told it would be (and he didn't know Draco was in love with him, ofc, so he couldn't understand why it didn't work). So this was what made Draco ill, because there was a bigger hole to fill between them that friendship and civility wasn't enough to fill
> 
> Draco knew something had gone wrong with the alteration to be having this effect on him, though he didn't know how exactly - he knew this had happened because he was in love with Harry. He just didn't know that Harry knew the alteration had gone wrong - and Harry is afraid that Draco finding it out now would cause him to feel hurt and betrayed and doubtful of Harry's love in some way, and so it would make him sick again (because negative emotions between them affect Draco badly now)
> 
> The ending is definitely meant to say that Draco won't care, that he's fully certain of Harry's love for him and he has no doubts and it won't hurt him irrevocably the way Harry is so clearly afraid, because he has seen all the proof he needs for it (including the fact that Harry is even willing to switch places with Draco so that the curse is more redirected towards Harry instead, pretty much willing to put himself in the line of danger for him)
> 
> If something still doesn't make sense, feel free to ask!!
> 
> Thank you for reading! And thank you very much to everybody that took the time to share their thoughts and kind feedback 💙 it was fascinating and lovely to read through it
> 
> You can find me [@alxmeg](https://alxmeg.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!


End file.
